morceau de concours

it's become a book of mismatched honesties, which means only that i am making a fool of myself again.

again and again.

if we had a home down here, we'd never want to leave.

this is all entirely uncrafted,
uncrafted and undrafted.

i have a sneaking suspicion they're only found in you: adventure and home.
i'm raking leaves into piles of mundanities.

should i be ashamed to knock at your generous door?
twin and opposite souls,
a town to append to my name,
i want to keep house,
pies curtains comfort
boats

the eyes of boys, i'll pluck them out myself
fresh from the vine.

everyone has come dislodged from something,
i feel as if i'll never land

don't let yourself rely on me, i may just fly away,
it takes years for me to nest in someone's heart,
centuries.

surrounded, i remain perchless.
i'm tied to the maypole's string,
round and around.

have we crossed the finish line into next year?

teach me to trudge,
i can no longer soar.

i want to see souls heavy with blossom,
like the moon,
half of their fullness shrouded in the dark,
weighty and round and ripe
for discovery,
pregnant,
the top,
the sky,
the pivot.

pirouette

dear therapy... sincerely, erin

dear shan (unedited):

i left your office absolutely livid, and uncertain of the why behind my anger. all i knew was that i was furious, my fists were clenched, my teeth were gritted, and i was stalking around with mechanical marching knees. moving the way mountain rams do when they clash heads, running, leaning, falling slowly together, caught in the air, and then, like lightening, lashing out. my top half floated while the bottom was two needles stabbing holes in the ground’s fabric.

i threw off my shoes and coat and turned up the killers as loud as i could, the hot fuss album. it can never be played loud enough, and then i cried harder than i’ve ever let anyone see me cry, until the hollow spaces in my head were all cleared out. new york wasn’t a place of gusty crying, more of concealed little weeps on the subway or in corner cafes. show any weakness and the homeless men and rats devour you.

i cried hard enough that my throat sounded like it was talking to the windows and i could hardly breathe, like dogs who can only whimper deep in their insides. all i remember thinking was

i can’t keep losing. how can you ask me to unveil myself when the only people who care to look at the ones who feed off others’ nakedness, who want to stare while clothed and imagine their eyes are rearranging hurts and hairs.” the only time anyone has ever intentionally been allowed to see me in this state of tears i was the last one in the breakfast hall, the very last of a hundred, at eight o'clock, two and a half years ago.

how can i come alone and empty-handed to someone with a home and expect the scales to be even? they never will be. i’ll always be the orphan looking to sit beside the hearth with someone, but they’ll only ever have the space left at their feet or in the spare room. i’m just a puzzle piece floating along and everyone else is already in a puzzle. i’d never be anything but a tumor on the edge, and i’d rather be alone than that. i’m too hungry to be fed, i would eat anyone out of house and home and expect them to ravish my larders. no one needs to eat that much, a feast, and i would force-feed them every bite. they’re all already docked and i’m floating downstream.

we’ve all got something to orbit around and i’m just spinning in circles. i ache. it’s only been ten minutes since i could stop crying and there’s so much pressure in my head. i just found a card i wrote my mom for mother’s day when i was six, in malaysian boarding school. the front is yellow with a fabric flower on it and the inside reads, “dear mom. i love you, mom. you are the best mom. thank you for being my mom. thank you for not putting me in the orphanage.”

sonntag's gebet

thy kingdom come, let me be its ambassador.
give me eyes to see what breaks your heart and into which slots i'm meant to slip.
open my eyes to my purpose here; let me not only find a path but walk it well.
send me an odysseus, my grey eyes are roving, madcap minds matched.
one of him or droves of them, and remind me that they are mortal.
let me know you like lucy and her lion... be so near; forgive me my deaf ears and grasping hands.
tune my heart, tune it daily. teach me to sing your songs.
i would be a parrot for you.
don't let me be spread so thin that i disappear.
save me from myself and my vices; the more i am bored, the duller my world becomes.
i can never get near enough; i am my own stumbling stone.
give me a desire to do everything with integrity, and a respect for my duties.
even the inane, give me the joy that was once mine.
help me show people i love them, even when i can't choose them all.
and help me peel back the layers of those i choose.
guide my hands and heart.
help me be wise with my money without being fearful,
please provide when i choose what i know my heart and family's hearts need.
i am sorely tempted to forsake them for security's sake and i am sorely tempted
toward anger with them for giving me stability with one hand
and taking it away with the other.
let me find the beauty i seek, make and find.
use me for what i was made to do,
use me as who i was made to be.
i love thee. draw me close.

just the weather

the mist rolls across the mountaintop, creeping up the sides and somersaulting across the peak, drifting in our window, tiptoeing down the hall and

swinging over the sill at the other end.
it's a parade,
olympian and gentle,
vaulting,
catching in my hair
like cottonwood clinging to the curtains
and lining the sidewalks.

hovering
drifting

ivan stoiljkovic

something in the water is making the croatian boys magnetic.

soon lion tamers and clowns will be shuttling them

into cages, all in a row, planted like

teeth

tiny ivory spades

lined in a ruby gum,

burrowing and trapped,

pointed like the tip of the big-top,
or an indian's head.
things of the past, tan and rich red.

the croatian boys stumble about the garden,

clinking with cutlery like an owl ruffling its feathers.

magic drawing boards

like those magic boards we had as kids, the ones with the magnet pens sweeping across the chain-link surface and all the iron shavings leaping up to form a line,
clustering,
clumping,
watch those heads turn

i'm not clever enough in the morning to flirt.

fish hungry for some sand, drowning

parched.

the stain-glassed greeks in the chapel

china roses on my shirt,
lilacs in my eyes,
i'm all abloom.
cosseted, and hidden from
view, dainty ladies obscured
by petticoats and eyelids,
pulled down low,
blinds in the evening.
i'm shrouded in a garden.
underneath, the roots
grow in a man.
behold, an achilles who
wishes he had the leisure
to sport breasts.

two weeks notice

the way birdseed takes root in a tissue, frail tendrilled roots, tiptoeing through the papers folds, grasping, calcifying and tight.

the way an oak takes root, choosing a spot and smashing through the sidewalk until cement yields and takes shape.

the way a pumpkin patch grows, sending out a long vine toward the sun, another toward the arctic, a third to the evening, a fourth pointing south, until its compass holds the earth that cradles it steady, like the people who hold each other's ankles and roll and roll and roll, a wheel going everywhere and nowhere

far from home.

pumpkins.
strawberries.
melons.
you and i