Front & Centre

Stepping behind this

grabbing its wrist and pulling its own punch

if I squint, or if steeped in coffee

and redding out a sphere encloses

perhaps this looks like

look at me

it's historic grandstanding

I haven't seen anything like it.

I'm in the seventh year here

and yes I'm from a place

where events are

knots on a 

cat o' nine tails

may as well be a

cat o' no tails.

The cat of, where?

History is not better served as the lego of facts.

And this is my observation here,

the endless hope that those knots

could be slid off like in a magic trick

scooped into a pile

vs the childish impulse

to start flicking them at those

still writing,

still perfecting their pen grip.

WHATEVER FOREVER MEANS

We are crazed

to make these contracts

to become coiled with

such hidden organs

so I want to be lonely

in this

honor the blood bound address

of a woman with sons

diamond skin because

no diner food

would make me happier –

back of my leg confined

reminder to hurry up

and go

Inauguration

I want to be like Grace Paley,
Marching with baby in tow.

I want to be like my old self,
Jean jacket, fanny pack,
Chanting
(What was that chant again, Emma?
Something like about my neck my back, withdraw from Iraq?)

I don't want Mosi to hear his voice,
so I turn the radio off, 
and put on the McGarrigles

That's gay.

i'm the kind of person who worries too much
what adults think of me
but when it comes to students
and seemingly neverending difficult conversations
i find myself screaming
"So I'm gay then!
I guess I'm gay if I support the LGBTQ community!
That must make me gay too!"
and then i regain my composure
to calmly discuss the issues at hand
while a student tries to screen a youtube video about "half men half women"
that argues that people are transgender because of Satan
and another student says i'm trying to censor them because i won't allow them to watch it in my classroom
making more generalizations
until i really shut that homophobic nonsense down.

Butterfly Doors

It’s all business in the left hand lane.

People hurry to the next room where

they will sit or stand, perhaps eat

and have some coffee sweats.

They could talk or they may

just stand and stare out a dirty window,

cry at the sight of an old woman

shuffling, hobbled at a purely

perfect slightly obtuse angle

holding tightly to the bags wrapped

twice around her wrists.

Don’t tap the brakes when

there are cars behind you,

don’t feel nervous when you

need to execute a right hand turn

and merge into the flow that’s

what driving instructors will tell

shaky teenagers who pretend

to not notice or be concerned

that they could kill someone

with the metal machine

completely encasing them.

10 and 2 isn’t natural, but

neither is dying

your hair the

color of your grandmothers’.

Silver gray white, so bright

your mother has to squint

when you

go to visit her and help

sort through the hospital

bills piled ceremoniously

as a center piece

on the coffee table.

Light reading. A

table she inherited from a

woman she never even met

on her now deceased

husband’s side of the family.

She looks away,

looks at the closed curtains.

She stays in the middle lane

when she drives you home.