Poetry

When I was a kid, I dreamt of being a goddess
atop a white piano, wearing angel wings straight out
of the Victoria’s Secret catalog of my childhood
imagination,

All there is to do is to say it
confused, say it ugly to not-there-ness,
because that’s what I need sometimes:

There are rhythms and there are rhythms. Some are cock’s crow tomorrows like tomorrow sure to come.

Imagine an azimuth in an imagined way. Imagine a line and let it be bent, a silverstring kink in a showman’s rope strung from two petals of a compass rose.

To be driven by—aside, even before physical
hunger; to be driven—above all, perhaps—by a force
more basic and fierce: the need, as tidal

Kataleya, the word of the day the day
you were born was inveigle, in case you ever
want to know. You can pronounce it vay-guhl

I remember the land less brutal, less
crowned in shotgun shells,

Only three days ago, I failed my driver’s test.

To my former landlady in Santa Cruz, I stole the seashells. It was an accident, the movers wrapping your basket of giant conus, conch and murex into boxes with my broken clamshells and scuffed sea glass from more northern shores. I still hold the conch to my ears, hear  the crashing sea. When you read …

I write the word on ice-fogged glass not yet shattered by night

raids. This is routine, one man removed and cuffed and bashed about his head.