This one was published in Alaska Women Speak.

All Things Mundane

Years ago, my right eye lost sight

of the spring leaves. The ones I passed by daily,

unimpressed by their freshness, their greenness,

their joyful triumph over the barren winter,

as I carried my backpack in hand and

my university degree in sight.

Though, as spring turned to summer,

the eye clouded and blinded, and the

eye chart on my bare knees

was gray like water

in a used watercolor cup,

and my canvas was as blank as could be.

Uveitis, a strange word, never really explained

the summer’s lost colors

and the air conditioned exile

of photophobia

and sunglasses worn inside.

Nor could it prepare me for the steroids,

the pills,

and that last shot,

directly into my blue iris,

that brought back more than my vision.

As the fall leaves’ edges no longer blurred and

smudged like an eraser correcting a mistake,

but cut sharp around their respective

burnt orange and yellow perimeters,

the terminating season gave me their colors

and my vision a refined sharpness,

a rebirth of something that was once taken away:

a gift of all things mundane,

never to be taken for granted again.

This one was published in Alaska Women Speak.

Someone May Have Said

Someone may have said:

you need to have been lost once

to know when you have been found.

When you have lost bits and pieces

of yourself along life’s way.

When you are able to mourn what you have missed,

have experienced enough to realize its importance,

and have wished time could undo all your regrets.

Someone may have said:

you need to have been lost once

to know that you have been found.

That life is only lived through things lost,

a journey spent seeking things to gain,

when all that matters are the things you lost,

that were priceless and not for sale:

the things that made life worth living

This one was also published in the Yellow Chair Review

Urban Snack

The two ravens are dancing on the green plastic trash can

again. Maybe the same partners as last week, but who knows

they all look alike, with their jet black heads and plump chests

that puff out like chickens as they jump up and down, a rhythm,

a Morse code, maybe an ode to Poe, like toddlers anticipating

snack time and a handful of cookies. Today it is not the recycling day,

so they pull pizza shards out of the thin slit that gapes open,

because you were too cheap to upgrade to the next level, and

too lazy to put out that one last bag before the pick-up

last week, so the cavity rests overfilled. They caw at you

to remind you of this as they tap, tap, tap on the can and

chew crust like its a new type of earthworm

of the crunchier kind. Strips of hardened dough and flashes

of dried tomato sauce they rip until they find that last full

slice of garden vegetable you were too proud to eat,

that was two days old and flexible like rubber,

cheese topping like wax. They shred it with delight and fury

until you shut the living room curtains tight,

shutting out the brief daylight, as you pray in haste

for that humming truck in the distance to appear and

the garbage man to announce closing time, evicting the dancers

until next week.

This one was published in the now defunct Yellow Chair Review in an issue dedicated to Prince.

Purple Lullaby

It was by chance that I met Prince

when my life was constantly

walking in from the out door.

Being 10, ugly with acne, and

having a single mom in a nuclear

family town was brutal some days.

I counted heads each day at noon,

of the 4^th and 5^th graders in the

the long line that snaked out the hall

for lunch room seats, to see

where my bullies would be sitting,

and if I could eat in peace that day.

My cousin Jenny would invite me into her room

when I visited her, the sacred room,

behind the door that was always closed,

that opened to the Madonna, Springsteen

and Prince posters. A cheerleader

with ripped bleached jeans and crimped

blonde hair, Jenny and I never

talked about bullies, but Prince,

as we listened to When Doves Cry,

Let’s Go Crazy, and my favorite, Purple Rain.

At Christmas, she gave me my own Purple Rain LP.

Now, you can listen to it as much as you like,

she said. Not just when you are with me.

And, listen I did,

behind my closed bedroom door.

The record turned around and around on the turntable,

a hypnotic motion that guided me

to the comfort of the purple rain.

Later, after my regular babysitter

was fired for hitting me,

I stayed with my great aunt who liked

Garfield, bodice ripper romances, and the Rat Pack,

and hated how modern music just repeated

the same lines over and over,

like Purple Rain does.

She couldn’t possibly understand how Prince

sang to me a lullaby,

allowing me to sleep at night.