As a child I didn't learn to logroll good or know it was a sport. To reach a clearing of summer-smooth water where I plopped a red float and hooked line to fish for carp With arms extended I'd glide dance skip jump run land on vast islands of logs spinning wet waiting for tugboats…
1. If under the full snow moon you can keep breathing—I'll be glad if I'm alive tomorrow, I said to myself driving the back roads in yet another storm. I had never seen such poverty—Mae stoking her stove from six in the morning until late at night. “Kind of lonesome, don't you know, alone, the…
By the selvage of the sea-green water I arise, sand-cast from the hands of two young girls. Born through the sun-baked unselfconsciousness of hours, embroidered with flotsam. An abalone, mother of pearl becomes my sea ear. With this shimmering bowl I listen to every sound. A flotilla of sea lace, scooped up dripping, waves for…
Because, of breasts with their nipples, of eggs so warm beneath their hen they seem to pulse, to throb, to give birth to themselves the way when your mouth has been on my nipple so long I begin to dissolve, begin to travel through your body, all larger longer than my own and lodge there,…
1 This morning, everything went with the tide: Deirdre's doll, Heather's hat, the Meow-Mix cats, all but this surge inside, nerve-sheaths white, blue-green, my ramrod spine loose, flexible at last. How to possess ourselves at 5 a.m.? When they come to me feverish and pocked, I tell them to brush their teeth, gnaw on a…
In abalone, northern lights settle down like barnacles incrusting holds of chinaware beneath the seas. Light plays, rolling designs on waves— hypnotic damascene— and gaze turns into sea-stare trained on the slates of eternity. Beyond, below, the headlands, magnitudes of brightness fade; light settles down, losing speed in long…
for Carolyn Matsumoto, 1959-1984 Everybody has some and everybody knows Dorothy has beautiful feet and does it matter ot anybody other than of course the ballet master who told her this is the foot I have been waiting for. Took it in his hands. Let it rest there on his thigh while he held her…
My father strokes each boot with wax. The smell's licorice. Sounds of wings as he buffs the black hides to spit-shine against his knees. I'd shave my face— echoing moons smooth, by either shoe. But men are measured to their glow. When night heels in, foot to sole, it's not brilliance he sees. I funnel…
My mother and her friends fit into the sockets of the no-color sky, tilted ocean sky. The salt-filmed air — a plagiary of the air condition in the mill where they work: its measure of exact seams, the quick symmetrical rhythm of eight precise motions. I am older than she is here in her zip-back…
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