Tag Archives: aging

117. In A Perfect World

 

When old women stop taking 

care of children and pets and 

grown boys and houses they may

notice the age of their hands and 

wonder why they look like the hands

of grandmothers when their minds 

are still young and harbor dreams.

 

When old women have no one 

to feed except themselves,

the mirror may become a study 

of how so many memories could fit 

into such a compact body, and shrinking.

 

When old women rest they may find

beauty in the strange rhythms

of a lifetime, though they may have 

composed a very different symphony 

in a perfect world.

107. my aunts

.

my aunts look like my

mother as they age, lovely

eyes and smiles that blow

all the fuses. their blood

pulses ancestral coal and tin, skin

slick with a ranch’s fresh

stench of branding: in this case

.

colts and

madness and

– oddly –

social justice a rich seam, shot through

the bedrock of calving and misogyny.

.

rage and shame, too, evenly laid,

thin but

persistent lodes snaking

through each sister.

.

how alive two are yet, how 

men stunted them all,

the girls. 

now they fade.

they stare out across dry lawns,

all the colts broken

.

and we cousins sigh,

softly and half lost like the ranch

left fallow for our

winter.

68. suburbia

instinct subverted,

his eyes

catch

tuck tail

ping

off concrete

and return

like some tilted pinball,

traffic quick between.

.

couldn’t be twenty-five

years ago that boy

chained up in gold, blue

tattoes on a skin web

say

hey baby,

leaning easy on a rail 

and offering the dollars

tucked in the silk suit,

handkerchief pocket,

winks for all

i’d pull in on a weekend

and laughed

and i laughed right back.

.

that street jam

confidence now melted 

by blue boy eyes,

scattered in trimmed treetops

above summer lawns

sprinkled green:

i let that happen.

somewhere lost

the bone knowing

grace of filth

like born on a trust fund.

i wasn’t.

.

suburbs don’t happen –

they ooze,

busting us close

against every hedge

then spitting us out

on the world,

instinct shot.

.

43. Inquest

(For TR, BB, & L)

.

Today I screamed 

for fear

it has been so long since

I have heard a cricket 

and I have never been given

flowers on Valentine’s Day.

My birthdays pass.

We used to be four

living hard on long tethers,

catastrophically heaving in

expanding universes,

mouthing off and 

fucking with boys’ brains and

loving their hearts

and eating ourselves alive.

We are now sparse

and exactly four directions,

only air between.

.

Today I screamed for fear

it has been so long since 

I have watched an evening age

in silence and I have never

ridden a motorcycle without a helmet.

I have never 

received a love letter from a man I love.

We used to carry three guitars

and Black Velvet bottles, wore

fedoras, Vasque boots

and smoked like gypsies

tripping on each others’ feet

and ubiquitous hilarity,

cursing in three languages

just to watch the moon rise.

The boys came and were afraid.

We used to heave the earth,

quake tremors pulsing through confinement.

Now we seep and trickle.

Now we test waters with a heel

holding a man’s hand,

suspicious that we need him.

We whisper through the 

telephone receivers 

to each other.

.

Today I screamed 

for fear

it has been so long since

I have led a man’s hand

and I have never seen the monarchs

migration route.

My birthdays pass.

We four cudgeled chastity,

fervently exuberant still

we were only miserable 

abundance trapped,

believing in the control of

climate by travel.

We thought love was effortless.

Now we are dense as

salt water

and deeper than oceans

of earth.

Now we will each seek the sound of crickets

and admit our fears,

gratefully letting them hold 

our hands.

.

We are sparse

and exactly four directions,

only evening air between.

36. Harvest


 

In a small room without 

windows, I am 

stronger than wire

able to run in one straight line

across earth’s skin

for days

steady on wind’s wing.

When I wake

I am born

back into almost

nothing I want so

I live on mescal hearts

and tizwin words

while dirt talks to me about

waiting.

Mesquite beans ripen.

Every day is a shortening

icicle off my eaves.

33. Fifty, for D

A herd of dust motes

is squeaking in sunlight

bars thrown across the room,

awakening all the sharp edges

of hard winter sun.

My bowels are weeping for you

for your hopeless hands 

married to your child

with webs of flesh.

He is not yours to keep.

Sunlight groans

across our days then

is gone,

each dust mote dancing

an individual samba.