My Favorite Flower
has a brilliant aureole that scares all the bees away. Her scent is so intoxicating— I can’t walk a straight line. My mean-spirited grandmother warns: “She talks too much, and her boobs are too big” When she comes into view with her three-legged calico cat, the earth stops spinning— tides grind to a halt, stars fall from the sky and light up the dark corners of the world. The sun no longer sets, and the man in the moon confesses—he’s always been nothing more than a figment of our imagination. When she’s near— birds tweet sweet melodies, pussy cats purr a drum roll, puppy...
Read MoreOctopus Love
“There should be room in the literature on octopuses for some exploration of the sensual, maybe even the emotional ways in which they communicate with us.” – Sy Montgomery, “The Soul of an Octopus” An octopus may recognize a man And let itself be petted like a cat, At least according to a woman Who gave a mollusk friendly pats As she tried to bridge a billion years, Looked longingly into the creature’s eye Behind a screen of glass and overcame the ancient fears. Hope-filled she sought to see into the shy, Discreet and modest being’s soul, Dispel the...
Read MoreMe and Chickens (Or My Life Experiences with Domestic Fowl)
Eggs a la Grandma, sunny-side up, slicked with bacon grease. Oozing pools of sunlight, sopped up with fresh bakery rolls, seasoned with family fealty. Grandpa egged us on: “How full are you?” “This full,” we’d answer, pointing to the middle of our foreheads; pink young things packed with egg-y stuffing. As a foil-covered, chocolate oval: the tastiest way to consume an egg. Do African farmers who harvest cocoa beans know what a chocolate egg tastes like? What if someone told them how much people pay for gourmet chocolate? Perhaps it’s better they never find out. Fluffy, puffy,...
Read MoreFirst Fox Here in 30 Years!
An adult fox rockets out from the usual darkness between our house and the dark house next door! We wait breathlessly in our dark parked car. The fox glides with its nose aimed low before the steady flow of a long tail that seems to propel its dreamlike streamlined body! It accelerates like it’s late for an important launch, or lunch date with that worried White Rabbit who led fallen Alice through the weird wildness of Wonderland. The fox doesn’t seem to see or smell us watching from our quietly ticking car, or it can’t care as it masters its mysterious midnight...
Read MoreWanting Not an Abstract Horse
but a flesh horse, his dark mane pressed to my forehead. Before the moon’s full, I want his solid body, a book of blood and breath. I need his ears to flatten against my ears. No, I wasn’t horse wild as a girl, didn’t die for statues and books though I painted a black stallion against a hot orange sky. It’s this horse I dream I sleep with, one that couldn’t, like a dog, take care of himself without me, this beauty already filling the space where I dream him, wait for him to become...
Read MoreDecember Night
The trees know first. An ice storm is moving in. I’m still holding back trouble I’ve carried around in my mind for two days. Yet some worries are always there. Must admit it has felt like an empty year. At midnight I come to bed in pitch black, but nothing brings relief in the clinging cold. All night I live with cracking branches, the wind refusing to die down, and still awake at four a.m. with my brain beating under this blurred sky. The slim birches, stripped of color, flex down and over in the freezing darkness. Then the sky clears, the white trunks straighten by dawn, as in...
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