I can tell it's love because when I'm with you
I turn into an idiot.

I forget what I did this weekend
And how to find 20% of my bill for a tip.
I say unclever and possibly racist things.

All of this to guarantee that you will think I'm an idiot
(and possibly a racist)
And not ever want to see me again,
Thus ensuring my unremitting singledom and eventual solitary death.

Stage Four

Too long the moanly hands
Ran over and over my hair
Smoothing the hiccups
Into shuddering Baby baby babies
And Ssshhhhh nows

Please convey my deepest thanks to everyone
For their condolences, prayers, thoughts, and good vibes
And please
Get out of my sight.

Inheritance

I cannot wear cowboy boots.
My mother gifted me with her relentless calves, which preclude wearing shoes that go up past my ankles.
I've never been fashionable, so maybe it doesn't matter.
But then maybe it does, because even galoshes get stuck at the juncture where the goose egg of muscle rejoins the rest of my leg; when it rains I have the appearance of someone who does not believe in sensible shoes.
These calves would make my legs powerful, if I were the sort of person who does powerful things with her legs. But I am not that sort of person. My mother, on the other foot, is.
She power-walks, power-spins, and power-plays tennis, and with her Herculean calves she propels herself ever forward, fit as a fiddle. I suppose that would make me more of a cello.
When my mother was informed of her colon cancer, she planted those powerful legs on the ground, and she stood and stood.
I cried. She stood. The cancer bowed.

On one particular Wednesday, I ripped a hangnail nearly to my knuckle.
I had gone to a Zumba class that morning, couldn't keep up, and left early in shame.
I sat in my car, the paunch of my belly drooping perversely over the waistband of my pants, and I wondered, where is my tenacity? Am I even a trace of that powerful woman?
As my index finger bled onto my hopeful spandex, I looked down.
And there they were, my trembly and uncoordinated legs.
I do not feel powerful yet, but my legs tell a different story. They speak to my mother. They say, This is my tribe. I belong to you.

Atelier Home Parthenon

The studio has long been left
to blankets of dust
on the crumbling statuary: my easel,
your bathrobe, the hunchback lamp.
There was a time two goddesses
came here for worship.

It was easy to see you then,
poised and posed, sore from stillness.
I saw and adored all of you.

I do not go back anymore.
My brushes are silent, dry from disuse.
I imagine you drape your seraphic limbs
across someone else's understuffed divan,
and I am glad of it, truly;
you bear the adoration and the arguments both with grace.

But I have not yet found a new temple,
so it is in the streets
that I kneel and chant in search of a name.

Tornado Berlioz

Sirens yowl from the main campus
Rattle my windows
Cindy watches the television in the
Basement where we camp, and
When Spencer asks a question she
Hushes him with a hiss.

They will wait out the tornadoes
For maybe two or three hours
Before they go to bed. I will sleep
In my hallway with the dog
Unwillingly smooshed in the
Crook of my arm.

In Alabama I know already
Houses were flattened
People were sucked out of windows
And tossed like frisbees into the wind.

I'm not worried.
Maybe I should be, but I'm not worried.
Instead all I can think about
Is Aunt Sylvia, the tiny television perched on
Her knees, and no color in her face.
She watched the footage they aired and re-aired.

We were safe in Baton Rouge,
Crowded, but safe. But the thing is, nobody knew.
We waited to know how high the black
Mold would creep, when we could go home.
In the thick, thick air for weeks
My Aunt Sylvia watched the tiny television
Come in and out of static, and if anybody
Talked too loud she would hush them with a hiss,
Completely unable to stop waiting and listening.

The weatherman says we are in the clear
A mere four hours later,
Not even long enough to give it a proper name.
So I name that time in the basement
With the symphony of hail on the roof way above us
And the wide television and Cindy's hiss
And the vestiges of Aunt Sylvia and static

All this I have named Tornado Berlioz.
He's a palimpsest of that violent woman,
Who took her time coming and outstayed her
Welcome, who left bruises blooming on
Our walls. Bridging six years, Berlioz
And Katrina do a two-step through
Birmingham and Johnson County and
Through my mind again.

Red Beans and Rice

You cook the vegetables down
So you can hardly tell anymore that
You're eating bell pepper or onion.
Call them vegetables
So they count for greens.
Let's not lie, though, because what we're
Really interested in here is the
Andouille and salt-pork,
The vinegar and the tony's.

Chop the onions, bell pepper, garlic.
If you put the fan by your face
It blows the onion scent away
So you only cry a little.

Chop the onions the way
Your mother does: inefficiently and
With a knife that has seen better days.
Hear your father remind you
Of the Holy Trinity, which in
Your home has garlic instead of celery
Because celery doesn't taste like anything anyway.

Mince the garlic, dice the bell pepper,
Chop the onions, wait for the
Salt-pork. The red beans are an
Excuse for the andouille and a
Mask for the vegetables.
If you add tony's at the beginning
And vinegar at the end,
Your grandmother approves
From no matter how many miles away.

Breadth

On my side table, Sarah's painting is lovely in its frame
Two figures, a woman and a cow, look up
Towards their only option, towards the crescent moon
There is a way out
Yes, the two of them are going to jump

As though neither knows that she is surrounded
By four strips of painted wood
And the galaxy beyond is my living room
With other paintings hovering on the walls

I gaze at the artwork, at the walls so attentively decorated,
At the books--gateways to infinite worlds--and at the window
Two smudged panes bashfully standing between me
And the skies so wide I can see my breadth

blink

I want you to know Jamie is doing fine.
The eggs fry up nice.
The boots collect mud.
I am fine, too.
Go to school, earn a little.
You'd hardly even know we were missing something.
The dog keens more than I do.

I come to the place where they buried your bones.
I know you're not there.
But all the same, I want you to know.
Jamie and me, we are doing fine.

Macaroni Portrait of a Love Affair

There once was a girl. (There's always a girl.)
But this one, she was the why of it.
She laughed at me, tripping over my own shoelaces,
And I left them untied, hoping to make her laugh again.
I whispered heavy secrets to her,
The kind that must be spoken with cupped hands and daring proximity.
She kissed me once. (She probably doesn't remember
Because girls can be so guilelessly affectionate,
But I was over the moon for days.)
When she left, I was certain I would never love again.
I had sworn my heart, eternally, to her.
Luckily for me, the attention span of a kindergartner
Does not often reach eternity, so by summer vacation
There was a new girl, (there's always a girl,)
And she quickly became the why of it.

As You Are

"What is to give light must endure burning."
(Viktor Frankl)


Alright, Sal, here's the truth.
Your left breast is smaller than your right,
And, perhaps aware of
This inequity, it bashfully gazes
Outward like a lazy eye.

And your teeth, like the rest of you,
Have never been what you'd
Call perfectly straight, preferring
Instead to lean upon one another,
Comrades in the downtime of the chewing war.

And if we're dissecting here,
I'll acknowledge that you do in fact
Have a streak of strangely-placed obstinacy
And a tendency to leave
The cap off the toothpaste.

It is possible that you will
Never know how to handle money,
Nor intuit when to stop arguing with your mother
Or how much salt to add.

It is possible that these moth holes
In your fabric will not ever be
Patched, and your birthmark
Will show no matter what you wear.

And to all this, I must tell you, Sal,
I will again and again
Say yes.
Because it is through the
Gaps that the light comes,
And through the tears that
We learn to mend.

And for my part, I will
Smile to tell you easily
From the women who wear
Adult braces and pad their bras
And pay surgeons to fix
What, to be honest,
Was never really wrong in the first place.