Selected Poems
Onyx Publications, Fall 2024
What the Dead Wear
I’d like to ask
my dad. Embarrassed
and delighted, he might be
naked now. So modest
when alive, even
with my body. Go
put pants on,
he growled once
not recognizing
the bathing suit under
my shirt. And so I grew
ashamed too—
of my flat stomach
making its way to growing breasts,
of the softest part of my inner
thigh. Couldn’t even think
of my labia, relieved my clitoris
was tucked neatly
inside. Once,
in high school,
I tried on a friend’s bikini.
So startling—
my sexiness. Now I take
my kids to swim and fall in love
with other middle-aged moms,
glorious in various cuts,
stretch marks, bulges
around belly buttons, under
arms. My daughter’s belly
presenting itself like a fresh
melon. Whatever makes you
comfortable, I say when she cuts
her shirts into crops.
I think of this, and I know the dead
are naked, and angry
they wasted so much time.
My father is sorry,
sitting somewhere, laughing
with the others. Legs
unconsciously open, ghostly
sex shining in an eternal sun.
Stick Knees
My knees creak
when I kneel. Hear
the sticks inside?
I could light a fire—
give it all away. A fire for you
and fire for you. I’m so hungry
my tummy is small. Last night
I was high in the dark
bathroom, and I could
see abs in the mirror
and I said, Oh!
I have abs! And that’s OK.
And it’s OK to pluck
the pokey hairs
on my chin. I’m still working
on being a crone, a giggling
old worm
of a lady. I’m brewing
tea for everyone
and sprinkling in
a pinch of good salt, and
you all will say
Whoa mama, my body
feels so good! I wrote a song
for you, little bird
with a fat belly. Here
is a robin song. I sing it
to my kids. I’m sending them
out and saying, Best of luck!
Best
of
mother
fucking
luck.
It’s hard. This banging
on walls and grief. So much
grief. You have to
hold it
close. Wrap it up like
a baby. I know
a little pasture girl who has
forgotten
her wings. I give her
a skipping stone
and send her
to the pond. I tell her
about the ladder that goes
right up to
the stars. Oh stars!
Oh baby twin deer.
Oh kitchen
filled with steam. Oh salty
chicken and sex
on the couch.
Settle in. You don’t have to
tell anyone.
Some mysteries
are better
squeezed tight
in our dirty,
little hands.
Hypothetical
Let’s say a kid goes to church camp
every summer, sometimes
sleeps on the top bunk, and some
summers lifts her hands while singing,
feels her fingers tingle
and knows there’s a big beyond.
Say sometimes the room becomes a river
and this kid gets swept away. Maybe
she’s a stick in the current
and she’s sure one day
this river will flood the whole world.
Maybe it’s made of a heavenly language
she can suddenly speak, and that might be proof
she’s on the right track.
Say one year the pastor holds up a cup of water,
asks the kids if they would drink
if he put in a drop, only a drop—let’s say
he emphasizes that—of sewer water.
Maybe he squeaks a marker across
a white board, Clean water mixed with dirty water
equals dirty water. And he’s clever
so uses a drop of blue food coloring.
Say this kid is watching close
how those tiny blue tendrils reach
every way, and she’s trying
to wrap her hands around a river, keep that holy raging
alive in her mind. And let’s just go ahead
and say she wants so badly, more than
anything, to be clean.
I Build an Altar for My Family to Pray
Dad lifts my braid,
twists a tick
from the base of my head.
My fourteen-year-old brother
drives us to the lake, takes
a gravel corner
too fast.
Cancer grows on my mother’s face
where she offers
her milky skin to the sun.
I sing into my parents’ mirror,
stop short at an angel
through the wooden wall.
Wind blows open
the front door, and our horse
walks into the kitchen.
Our little white car
tumbleweeds the ditch. I wake
in the back seat having dreamed
my first six years.
My grandfather walks
from his garden eating an onion
like an apple.
A preacher tells me
I’ll be a martyr—says God
has a special plan.
Don’t look under the bandage
we tell my mother, no matter
how much you want to.
Dad fries the heart of a deer
he killed. I let it
melt on my tongue.
Our dog runs through the pasture
with a block of government cheese.
Mom thanks the Lord
and makes lunch.
My sister sprints
a mile back to the trailer
while the boys and I stand waiting
for the car to explode.
My brother on his girlfriend’s
porch when something invisible
punches him in the jaw.
Dad hunch-shouldered
away from the phone. Cries
and says cousin Mark
shot himself dead.
Wyoming brushes my sister’s hair
from her face. Her legs, graveling
away from us. My brother’s eyes—
I sit on my Hobby Holly bedspread
imagining Hell.
My brother’s eyes
like broken windshields
watching for wings
or flame.
We Were Mothers
even before we were. Lifting
dirty, pink shirts to cradle
plastic babies to our flat chests.
Feel, we’d say years later
in line for the swings, and squeeze
each other’s small, sore breasts.
Womanhood hidden but surely there
like the things Lorna said
our parents did in their bedrooms.
Sometimes we’d hold crayons
between our fingers, take drags,
blow up and away from their little faces
like we’d seen
the good moms do.
Playground
Sometimes, sharp teeth children
bite off the tongues
of their mothers. The world is
filled with their smacking. Words
shaped around a pulpy mess.
Pigtail girl kicking herself
back and forth on the swing,
dump truck boy, costume bin
children, firefighters, princesses,
crawling through the yawn
at the top of the slide, all mouthing,
like a peach pit or hard candy,
their mothers’ throbbing
tongues. And the mothers
run the curve of the merrygo-
round, move toward muffled
calls of Underdog! wipe dripping
noses, bend to tie laces, while
the orchid of their silence
is opening
is opening.