I am pleased to announce that the Eunoia Review has accepted my poem “Doll” for publication in late May. Will post when it is available!
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Category / Poetry
Poetry Post-A-Thon: All Things Mundane
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.
Poetry Post-A-Thon: The Diagnosis
This one was published in Alaska Women Speak.
The Diagnosis
In my cave,
in the emergency room,
the doctor left the room dark,
with just a crack of light,
that bled in from the hall outside.
In just eight hours, my right eye had gone
from noticing the blurred hands
of the clock on the wall,
hands that smeared like ink on wet paper,
to the hot lightning bolt
of photophobia, pain that had me
holding my head in the dark,
and praying for no light.
For an hour, my fiancé and I
were left alone in the cave,
to watch shadows move underneath
the closed door frame,
as the eye specialist saw
a man who lost control of a chain saw
and injured his eye.
You’re lucky. He can see you too,
the doctor said,
as I imagined a slipped hand,
fragments of wood splintered in an iris,
a severed optic nerve,
and the blood that brought him to the hospital.
Later, the specialist caressed my hands,
as he scooped them away from my right eye.
I smelled the Dial soap
and wanted to believe him:
I understand this hurts.
I’m fairly sure of what you have,
but I have to be sure.
Then, like a piercing light saber,
the scope swept across my eye.
Before the pain could cut
through my brain, he stopped
and pronounced:
iritis, at a minimum.
The specialist dimmed the lights
and my right eye went closed again.
My left eye, the one that could still see,
saw the first doctor
who shadowed the specialist.
I knew it! His fist balled
in triumphant victory,
of a correct diagnosis,
of what I had lost.
Poetry Post-A-Thon: Someone May Have Said
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
Poetry Post-A-Thon: Urban Snack
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.
Poetry Post-A-Thon: Purple Lullaby
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 4th and 5th 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.
Poetry Post-A-Thon: Tanka Journal
This one was published in the Tanka Journal:
Snow retreats arctic
Hikers slosh through muddy trails
Damp wood campfire burns
April’s not the cruelest month
But a warm resurrection
