Category: trauma
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the weight of living
1. Because they were loved and were loving Because they were needed and were needy Because they did not want to be misunderstood 2. Because they would not submit, they stayed, as long, as they could. Eventually the weight of living became too much They knew they could not wait long enough For the loving…
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AARP
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by
The retired Pied Piper tried to forget What he did to village children Sat on a park bench and thought There was much to learn from a pond: The way it does not flee away to the sea The way reflected clouds and trees don’t pollute water The way a stone will skip before it…
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High, narrow ledge
high, narrow ledge fire behind net below ready to jump – no wait – needing to jump he wonders if the last jumper was smaller than him holds his breath shuts his eyes steps into space 10-12-21
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New Orleans 2010
(edited to third person- maybe I’ll write a chapbook of memories referring to myself in third person) ======================= he walked all night in the French Quarter beignet sugar dust on his coat sat on a bench among the homeless watched the sun rise over the river listened to conversations as if he sat on a…
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meditation on a leaf
…..watch leaf detach drift to ground …..ask daylight to replay the moment …..exhausted unencumbered by connection to past …..leaf releases hold leaps into abyss …..inaudible to ears a gasping sound 12-8-20
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Dream #1,457 or Three Years, Eleven Months and Twenty-Seven Days
I dreamed he came running into my room Begging me to hide him; terrified, sweaty, breathing Hard as the girl running from an ugly death in the cemetery Of a horror movie. I said, relax your having a nightmare. It is probably All those late night burgers you eat; put down your phone and stop…
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Dreaming with migraine headaches
waking in a time loop of childhood terrors reading in front of class with a speech impediment holding your arm to control a tic trying not to hum or have outbursts in class scrapping in the hall because someone made fun paddlings in the office whippings when you got home suicidal thoughts you fought to…
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One-winged bird
On a wall of my mother’s parents’ living room hung her siblings all in a row and a photo of Grandpa’s family. It took me 68 years to ask where was grandma’s family. A simple answer, a dark secret or just the misogyny of an old German family. I’ll never know. The whys of this…
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That guy
I am that guy that guy who stands in a museum up close to a Frankenthaler painting looking at an individual stroke where a brush fiber rises up thinking everything I discern had meaning for the painter I am that guy that guy who stares at a Kahlo piece from across a gallery trying to…
My husband's poetry 