nina turns 60

11/30

The stones rattle, the shade is hot like sunlight.
Pieces of the bluff skitter down to the beach. Swallows
swoop and dodge as you walk 
a large field of long grass that used to be
a military parade ground
and is now a state park.

Blue water below seems deeper than sky.
There's a sign on the fence warning you to stay
back, the bluff isn't stable, the illustration so comical
it undercuts the seriousness of the plea
to save yourself. Another sign gives
instructions on how to properly

hang glide so you won't
get carried out to sea or blown back
into the bluff. Nobody's around, not kids
playing hide and seek in the bunkers nor deer
grazing in the long grass by the old 
radio building.

Nothing connects the way it should, 
there are no edges to this puzzle
no borderline no barriers
you shouldn't cross, no helpful printed boxtop
to use as a guide as you test a piece 
against the others looking for each
sweet inevitable match.

 

therapy

Morning sun through glass
illuminates the places
I have yet to clean.

9/30

It all begins with a breath, the diaphragm pulling down and creating a vacuum in the bronchial passageways into which air will flow. Limbs and airways and capillaries all get smaller the more they fractal outward and weren't you surprised when you learned your lungs weren't like empty balloons but instead filled with tiny pathways like branches, brachia: little arms. 

The mechanics of a scream and a song are the same. You have to know which to use and which to swallow. You have to be careful with the Lucky Strikes. So many ways to bring down the house. So many paths splitting off from where you stand right now, backstage smoking. How many times did you step out of the wings and open your mouth to astonishment? How many stories did you choose not to tell?

Wouldn't you be surprised to find me here after you died (yes it was cancer, but not of the lungs) telling stories with your name on them as if they never belonged to you in the first place, as if all that applause never meant a thing. 

Medusa

I squish tiny sugar ants with my fingers,
dozens of them as they make their way
across my desk to some piece of yesterday's
lunch I dropped there. Where is the Buddha
in me that wants to do no harm? This morning
I looked out at the dark sky and wished
for Venus to rise there, and then she did
which sent a sort of giddy thrill through me,
the opposite of power.

Medusa was raped. Before she got her snake hair.
Like all the other goddesses and mortals;
it's as ordinary as cancer. We are all so 
sick and monstrous, wandering through
our days searching for scattered crumbs
and a sister along the path who can tell us
where to go. Only the lucky ones will be
remembered and feared, only the blessed
will be turned to stone.

Neptune Is One of Only Four Roman Gods to Whom It Was Appropriate to Sacrifice Bulls

I get junk mail from the Neptune society now
which is at least a couple of notches more upsetting 
than the recruitment solicitations from the AARP
which are merely annoying considering I can't afford to retire.

I will, for sure, die though. My parents now have their urns
which they received in the mail like any other package from
Amazon dot com, those sleek wooden boxes delivered inside
quotidian cardboard boxes freaked me out a bit, more

than the memory of when the Neptune society people,
two nice women dressed plainly like hippie nuns
(though of course not nuns), came to wheel away 
my grandmother the morning she died and I saw

her lying stiffly slack-jawed on her bed,
a bed I still sleep in sometimes, mind you, when
I visit my parents' house, but never on that side
the one near the window, the one where she was dead.

I don't even think of her that much tucking in,
though I used to make sure to let her know
that I wasn't much interested in having her
visit me in the night or manifesting any

ghostly or otherworldly occurrences. She would have
hated the implication she would do any such thing.
She disdained all that nonsense, which is why they
just came and wheeled her away and that,

as they say, was that. 

 

 

my life has been perfect

riding in the car
on the way to the ferry
singing Bradbury
my son next to me
(his voice so much
better than mine)
this is when I know

salve

call your senator call your congresswoman call your neighbor
take down their yard sign that pitches for the other side

knit a pink hat, knit ten pink hats and give them to all your friends
eat organic kale from the farmers market

kale is the new broccoli is the new Caesar salad is
the new plastic that will degrade into microscopic

grains but can't biodegrade because bacteria that loves
to eat plastic hasn't evolved yet, if you believe in that

sort of thing, evolution. Even the sphericity of earth
is in question these days by some of your neighbors

at least by those wackos on the internet
so you may as well do what feels good

or feels right or feels righteous because
god always anoints the ones with the biggest guns

apply a thin layer slowly and carefully
to maximize effectiveness and minimize dis-

comfort

all the girls in the neighborhood

All the girls in the neighborhood running through sprinklers running through grass running with their girl bodies sleek and thin with their long stringy hair and white teeth straightened by orthodontia and their handstands and backbends in the front yards causing the grownups to exclaim with amazement at their flexibility not their strength not their fearlessness (which was natural to them) but which was not bravery because bravery requires knowledge of what one is up against and all the girls in the neighborhood had no idea what was coming for them what was waiting just around the corner beyond the cul-de-sac driving a 1979 Camaro or a beat-up red Mustang but no it wasn't the boys driving those cars around the block slowing down and finally (finally!) stopping that changed everything it was their own bodies (really) that would be the cause of everything that happened later that happened for the rest of their lives

front yard tanka

 

Lavender trimmed back
along tilted concrete path
planted to repel
hungry deer that devour
whatever else flowers here.

Rounded river stones
piled high under white drain pipes
catch the winter rain
before releasing it to
spiders hidden underneath.

Appropriation

Your language, your food, dancing salsa in the clubs,
all the brown-eyed boys with loose hips
eager to take their hands and place them
just there or there along the smooth
soft places inside me, your city streets
and cathedrals, the casa de la cultura
with its wide open patio and tiny stone rooms,
an old nunnery where black widow spiders
suspended themselves in bathroom stalls
exposing their red-marked abdomens
to all the ladies sitting there with panties down
around their ankles.

Your art, your stories, your stature, beneath mine
both in height and all the other ways,
except of course your masculinity
about which you would at times remind me
red-faced in your language, which was now
our language, which was now the foreign language
in the country where we lived.

Your heart—you might say—but you gave
that up freely, put it in my mouth like
slices of ripe mango, begged me to swallow
one piece after the other until I was
red-lipped, sated, smiling at the way
I didn't even need to use my teeth.