POEM A DAY 2019

#3

Blue Black Haiku

a six word poem

for sale
wedding bands
gently used

phone addiction

disheartening, seeing get cell phone sober
on my resolutions list, now going on
3 years. I misplace my phone absentmindedly
this morning,
and think about it longingly
all day.

at lunch, it hurts that I cannot take a picture.
I pretend it's about not recording all that
hard work, but I can feel the skin of my fingers
keen with touch-hunger.
like skin-hunger, but for plastic buttons,
luminescent screens. a low-down urge
to memorialize the meal needling into me:
I can no longer be a person eating a meal she cooked
for friends, enjoying the experience and later
being warmed by the memory.

as all these times
seem thin to me now.

the real world a single dimension,
weightless.

Power through

This body is braided
Is unbraiding waited
Is cycling through partings

This body needs that hard floor
and propulsion
And a bag to gather.

We were talking
About you the other day
Unraveling

We were cycling back
We were powering through
We were winding up on the same
Radio show again.

MARION AT STORYTIME

Start with shrieks and eye contact.
Moms: “her smile is contagious!”
Finish with tears. Spent.

For Rio, Leaning

In the sunglasses you bought
at Venice Beach
against a mural of Chaplin
in indigo and turquoise
jeans rolled up above the ankle

Did you know I rolled
and smoked
one cigarette a night
after you fell asleep
during our cross-country drive?

Sometimes the silence in the car
reminded me of the silence in
the car I shared with my father
when I was sixteen, only
this time I was holding the wheel

Now, we share a pitcher
walk the Pacific coast
colors deepen after the ocean
swallows the sun. Orange,
purple, pink just being pink

2034

things could get really bad
things will get really bad, they say
and i believe them. still,
all i can think about today is this vacation
i've been saving up to save up to take.
and i have a good job this year,
could really put something away.

the emerald isle--you know the one.
selfish, maybe, now that we know it can't last.
but maybe i still will.
one last bender before lent.
do what ya wanna. did we?

then again, i walked outside today and
the air was so green
the grass was so thick
emeralds, even, were the banana leaves.
so, i thought, in the end,
whether i cross the ocean or not,
everything will be o-

oh.

Decades & What the City Does For You

So post,
random,
random is post,
what?
Blair, oh my blood rushed,
fingers to the screen,
where recently he reappeared,
his brow ploughed,
his clipped adamance: war is real,
it's bloody happening.
He couldn't have known much about the last decade,
couldn't have possibly known
we'd ditched post without realising,
his platform a newish spoof,
whilst the focus group, and the cycle,
and its opinions unspooled.
So there's my vote,
it's Hanwell, 2001,
my sullen high street charm,
assuming post-race has bedded here, first
in the capital,
the test bed,
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna
be igno---ored,
for so long I sang,
for so long not knowing,
how little I knew about the decade before.

Stubble

I was not expecting you
Here, today
Or ever
But here you are
Clearly ready to see me
To see my face in rawness
Shocked and unprepared
I’m embarrassed about my hair
I was not expecting you
To push it behind my ear
Run your finger down my spine
Or open that door
I’m teetering on the threshold
Gripping the frame
I must seem like a painting un-matted
Bleeding off the edges
Or a novel with too many endings
Badly in need of editing
But who has time to do that work?
Who has the energy when there are
So many enthralling stories to tell?
I was not expecting you
To fill this notebook
I would have shaved if I were expecting you.