My Mother Was Here

my mother was here

until she wasn’t

my sister and I search for her

in the hearts of other women

we pass them all by

just ships in the night

we find motherhood in each other instead

when our tongues are heavy with grief

for a mother that has not died

she is gone just the same

I sometimes see my mother looking at me

in the mirror

the pain in her eyes looks so familiar

I trace the lines on her face

feel the sins of a thousand lives settle

onto my shoulders

I tell my mother about the daughters I will never have

how i would have loved them

how I would have taught them the truth of

what the world will ask of you

I tell my mother I love her even though she is gone

and it almost does not matter

that she does not hear me

Super Thundercock Lightning God

When I tell you he's got music in his blood
What I mean is that his life makes me sing, dance
Stomp my feet into the earth, push forward
Encompass me in sound
What I mean is that he is everything music should be
And always has been

No one warned me about the darkness in love
When love is so strong, so present
Creeps into the seams of your everything
And you do not feel worthy
But suddenly you are
Because he deserves it
Because you deserve it

When I tell you he is the light of my life
please understand that he is the sun, swallowing the sky
Interrupting the flickering bulb, the slow burning candle
To show us all how to shine

Wolves

Sister, we are 7 years old
I am telling you a story about three little pigs
and a wolf and you are laughing and wanting to be the pig with the brick house
then we are 12 years old and we are bleeding confusion and anger
cursing the feminine parts of ourselves for being too much too soon
and we build straw houses right next to each other because don't know where to find bricks
and we are 17 and we love him
We are 18 and we love ourselves
We are 19 and now we don't love either
We are 20 when we try to be big bad wolves but it feels like too little too late and we don't even know why we care these pigs anyway
We are 21 and I am telling you the story of us and how the women in our family have been building houses with their bodies since forever and how wolves have always come to blow them down
and you
sister, you are laughing.

Booknerds

BOOKNERDS OF THE UNIVERSE:

We breathe stories like oxygen, 

Then spreadwords into our world like wildfire

We hear the call of the wild from the pages of a worn paperback,

We understand the power of myth

We stare into the eyes of the world and see narrative

Dear readers, we understand how worlds are created.

We let stories live in the spaces of our minds

let the magic fill our veins

we grow Halloween trees in our hearts and

search the skies for moving castles 

we steal kisses from Kafka

and we know that every love story is a ghost story

because we live in the best of times and the worst of times,

drinking bathtub gin,

and smiling because we understand that a hero ain't nothin' but a sandwich.

We vacation in Narnia and Lusitania,

and we love Jo but goddamn is "Albus Severus" a stupid name.

We are friends of elves and cacticae and hobbits and dragons,

We find truth in pages and understand how words can change lives
how language is alive 
We follow words down the rabbit hole that is empathy 

We have lived Bukowski's low life

danced in Neil's Neverwhere,

and we know fear

know loathing

know Las Vegas

We got through Wuthering Heights twice before realizing that we hated it, 

and we've spent many a day wondering exactly what combination of drugs we'd have to take to get on Lewis Caroll's level

Falling in love with our tell-tale hearts

we embrace stories like old friends

and inhale the perfume of binding glue and parchment like the scent of a lover

worshiping in library cathedrals,
we know that books are not just paper and ink but containers for ideas and change
we read because we know that to value imagination is to value our humanity
we read because in language there is freedom 

My husband got music in his blood
Got rhythm in his bones
Got songs in his mouth
Tap tapping on a drum set

a steering wheel

our kitchen table

I hear him

My husband got broken up beats that hide behind his teeth 

His heartbeat is my bass line 
my life line
when the world crashes into my rhythm
he is there

keeping time

Tap tapping on a high hat when I am low

Most days his music is all I can hear
when depression has taken hold of my body
filled these lungs with anxious melodies
shoved songs of doubt
of insecurity
of hate
in my mouth
When my demons are a symphony of destruction in my mind
I listen for his voice
and as I hear his tongue sing with sweet harmony
I want to throw myself into the song
but I

I do not know how to be anyone's metronome

Yet here I am 
wife, friend, lover
my husband and I dancing through this life

And just when I think I will fall
he catches me


And I heat the music in his blood
Feel the rhythm in his bones
and taste the songs in his mouth

I heard no church bells - revision for slam clinic

Daisies covered that field like waves in an ocean
I swam through currents of yellow gold and delicate white 
A wild bride in her floral sea

I felt the softness of lace trail down my back 

to my feet

heard bracelets clink on my wrists

as I reached for his hand

Blue topaz and silver circles sang our fingers electric 

and we tasted love and freedom and youth

bare feet grounded 

in the magic
of us

I heard no church bells but I worshiped in the open air

and I gave my vows with certainty

because I wrote them myself

So we bound ourselves

woman to man

man to woman.

Revision of Little Sister

Little sister,
Little fairy child,
Little "what are you reading?"
and little "can I have that when you're done?"

little taller sister,
but still little sister,
When did you become a woman?


I'm still living in the times when we had blueberry tongues
when we picked all of the roses out of poppa's garden,
Little sister, our happy years were a bubble that burst too soon
One moment we were destiny's children and 
suddenly we were girls running to womanhood

like it was a race
We begged our bodies not to inherit the sins of our father
and you swam with sharks
and I danced with monsters
and we promised each other that one day life would be different

Little sister, our balance act of denial and pain 

never protected us from the number on that scale

Never taught us that it is possible to love ourselves

Little sister, no one gave us the words to name our experiences
and it would be years 
before we found the courage 
to speak them above a whisper 

And when we did,
we would notice that "Anorexia" sounded prettier
than caffeine pills and "I ate earlier."

"Depression" would taste like dust in my mouth
but you would hold my hand from a thousand miles away

and "family" would become a word
we would carve into our hearts

Little sister, I remember the whispers in the halls
and the interrogating eyes
and I need you to know that it wasn't your fault
Children lash out at the misunderstood
and you took those lashes with all the dignity you had left
We grew tough skins and tougher tongues
then we shed that life like we shed pounds

but little sister, we have lived haunted lives
The ghosts of our self hate show up in mirrors
in bedrooms
in the mouths of so called lovers

Little sister, we have kissed sharks and danced with monsters

but when you wonder if you are beautiful
know that you are
and when you wonder if you are strong,
know that you are
and when you wonder if you are worth it
know that you are

and little sister when you wonder if you are loved,
know that you are.