cruise ship pro-tip

spoon-less spoon i call the big metal spoon
whose weld broke
thereby leaving only a handle
tucked in the back of the drawer
that also houses the can opener,
the garlic smoosher, the wire pastry cutter
and i ask is this something you need
_______

what’s green and growing out there alyson asks
and all i see is moss on the hillside
sortof green but also kindof a dead yellow
_______

all the light pouring into
the light-green-walled and light-blue-floored studio
on the 2nd floor that features
south-facing, north-facing and east-facing windows
_______
the promenade tom says
his cruise ship pro-tip
that’s where you can get away
from all the people, that’s
where you can see all that water
_______

the galloping
up and down the hallway
with little squeaks along the way
of lisi the gray cat
sometimes chasing
and sometimes being chased
_______
what word is there
for licking the taste of a place
in other words, the last brown syrupy bits
of sorghum that i spatula from the jar
some that i lick and some that i
stir into the batch of granola
with the maple syrup and coconut oil
_______

the smell of the granola i’ve been intending to make
for days now finally filling the kitchen
tonight alongside the mountains of dishes
from our day’s work of bottling apple cider vinegar
and grinding eggshells and
mixing up a batch of spoiled-cat cat food
and dinner dishes and
_______

a futuristic sci-fi dystopian novel i say
about the coronavirus
leading to the stock market drop
and how this could be the beginning
of the unmendable unraveling

 

 

we’ll live our best lives ever

these are good old mushrooms
i say of the criminis (beginning to dry out)
that i cooked up
with the kale and onions and garlic
while larry meiller talks on npr
about how grateful he is
to be learning and meeting great people
on his radio show which, if i remember correctly,
he’s been doing for 50 years
_______
i’ll be by your side i say
to abby whom i barely know
but this is one way i know
to support/offer allyship
_______
the bluffs rising up
along the mississippi as seen
from the student union’s third floor
while abby says i like being from all over
_______
me leaning on the hood
of david’s black car while he smokes
his cigarette in the parking structure
before he puts the butt out
in the little liquid left at the bottom
of the iced tea bottle
_______
one thing i thought
i’d never get good at
is eating while driving
but look at me now
reaching into the hazelnut quadratini bag
while shifting from first to second to third
doing my best not to get crumbs everywhere
_______
the made up song i start singing
at lisa’s dining room table
while lisa and jennifer each look something up
on their phones:
i once was hanging out with my friends
but then they got sucked sucked in in to to to their phones
_______
juniper’s fingers
in my shoulder blades
along my neck
working to melt the pain
rubbing the cool blue feeling stuff in
_______
how about i send you all the stars
and you send me all the bike lanes
and we’ll live our best lives ever i propose
to an urban dweller who longs for stars
from a rural dweller who misses bike lanes

 

like the sound of bones

two thirty a.m.
lisi the cat climbing all over me,
me a small mountain range
and he a gigantic lion
_______
the kitchen a spill of window prism rainbows
in morning sun
juniper walks into
while i move from warrior two
to half moon
_______

the pain in my knee
begging the bell to ring
(surely, it has been 50 minutes, no?)
and my deep breaths
quelling the pain in my knee
_______
on the four mile loop walk,
we stop to talk to pine trees,
to listen to a singing bird perched on a snowbank,
to thank the blue shadows and crunchy shapes
in the snow pushed up to the edges of the road
soft with melt
_______
i learned a new spanish word from gabi
for “skeleton” she says calacas
like the sound of bones knocking against each other
_______
dog paw prints as big as a palm
pressed into the blonde gravel
wet on this day of melting
_______

the blue puffy jacket
gripped in my hand
on the final bend
where we are protected from the wind
with the sun at our backs
_______

what we call pink birch branch hour
which really only lasts minutes
as the sun sinks
and how the blue of sky that the pink birch branches
glow against changes too

 

i sing the holy holy

how i sing the holy holy holy song
ever so quietly at the kitchen table
for larry, whose spirit has begun
the bridge-crossing
from this world to the next
_______
to the plum burglar
zoe titles her response poem to
wcw’s this is just to say
_______
they will keep singing together for the rest of their lives
annie says about the groups of bulgarian women
that have been gathering together for years and years and years
to sing
_______

you can see orion’s sword juniper says
of how clear these cold cold moonless nights have been

spoons in exile / the round rounding

the redbrown roiibos tea rings
at the bright white bottom of my favorite light mint green mug
sold on a porch by a local potter
_______
it’s official i say about the stork bite that’s still there
light pink where the hairline meets my neck
_______

how we fill the yellow room
with our voices resounding
the round rounding in six parts
when we come into our calling
we become bells calling to everyone else
oh, come, come into your calling
_______

how i look for the moon
when we enter the cemetary after dark
but the sky is just cloud
and the glow comes from everywhere
including the snow kirself
_______
aloo gobi is how i say “i love you”
luica says about the meal she made
for búho alongside the squash curry
_______
the secret front porch club i say
and the spoons in exile luica says
and it’s a cou de’tat mf’ers i say
while washing dishes at the small sink
_______
how lisi the cat is more inclined
to eat the food from the spoon
rather than from his bowl
and how he digs the kitchen floor
as if in a litterbox
to cover it up when he is done
_______
you can’t go on that cruise she says
about the alaska thing
if you are going to be quarantined

all the sunlight flooding

my migraine brain clouds so hard
that when someone names a friend
i can’t pull a person up in my mind to match that name
though i know it must be somebody i know
and when i try to add a date to my calendar
i can’t remember which icon on my phone
will take me there
_______

all the sunlight
flooding the back bedroom
as i nap the ache away
and lisi the cat curled
in the nook my knees make
_______
flash of red
a cardinal swooping across green acres road
at cotton-candy-dusk-sky time
as i drive down the snow-lined hill to town
_______
annie poking her pointer finger
up into a hole in the back of matthew’s shirt
while we gather around the stage
where writers step up to read
_______
the bright green of margaret’s sweater
aross the table from me
_______

thank you for helping to make this place
feel more like home i write
next to my signiature in tanja’s copy
of contours: a literary landscape
_______

jo marie asks me
if i walk everyday and i challenge her
to read next time an invitation extends itself
as long as it’s not something that feels
like it might kill her

 

as we travel the ridgeline

the red shimmersheen
of the prickly pear chocolates
and the purple shimmersheen
of the lemon heart-shaped chocolates
in the bright sun spilling in
on this -10 degree day
_______
the particular heartbreak
of the whine of cat outside the door
on a -10 degree day
_______

the snow lining the roads pink from sunset
whose colors wrap 360 degrees around us
as we travel the ridgeline
to offerdahl road
and turn at the intersection that will always be remembered
as the place where we saw the fox that one night
(similar to the lemon cake turn on the ride home)
________
def leppard, motley crue playing on the community radio station
while i draw grids with a rule
marking out the days of each month
of the upcoming year