I try to stop myself from thinking about her vacant mouth.
Is it better than mine?
Do you hold her ribs from above,
is she skinny enough for love?
When its over do you think about How free you feel?
Are you keeping count like we used to?
Is she the wrestliing champion of the world?
Are you finally whole?

I hope to hell not.

A flash
suddenly
A flash
suddenly
A flash
suddenly
sat down in a nest of lightning bolts eagerly awaiting their turn

                           To be Zeus’ favorite
                           To be the catalyst of his masculinity
                           To be the one that cracks open the sky

mesmerizing her eyes 
                           just long enough to leave her sobbing                                     
                           and bleeding
from the hoof marks all over her back

The groaning window
porch fan, green wicker
whirring ice box
full of Orange Crush. 

In my weakness
redeeming parts 
severe as ever 
coffee in a thick white mug. 

The smokehouse grease
hot cistern, water pump, 
spirea and marigolds, dairy barn, 
cigarette in a pink dish. 

Right inside the kitchen
Help me. Help me right now
to sit at that table again 
one more time. 

Inside the person
lives a person who 
refuses to help the 
person whose source 
has been its pride. 

To skip, to lift
the flesh struggles
the nose whistles
the mind frets
the eternal scope

My plowed head
watches the captain 
on the bridge, 
standing still, 
coming for me. 

My little hands
under nail dirt
and skinned knuckles
hold the dry, warm
hand of my father. 
His fingers, 
the earnest ten percent
of a life loan, 
the fullness of grief
to gain in death. 
This grip again
we walk along 
a gravel road
and smell the 
rich dirt of wish. 

I miss the old days
when I didn’t know better 
when I didn’t need anybody
when Worldy Goods could be packed 
in a back seat in half an hour 
and only old people died
and then, at the end of their life. 

Freedom’s wage weighed 
on a food scale in ounces, 
and I water flowers like 
it means something. 

Go lightly, write, pray. 

We’re all Lula Mae Barnes
with four children from another woman
married at fourteen to a cracker jack
horse doctor whose heart we broke. 

We never had no cause to leave, 
but we did.  And we’d do it again. 

Oh, how you have never expected to be written about
in a way that uses beauty to become you on a page.
Your biggest fear, to be shown fully to the world,
standing in the sun and facing yourself.
But you sparkle, always welcoming honesty.  When first introduced,
I was told you were just a personality trait, manifesting
yourself in the types of bodies that grow worry warts
all over themselves. No one would admit to your loyalty,
the way that permanence is afraid of you because
even on your bad days, you refuse to leave. Words escape
in your presence and you always have questions, full of
endless wonder for the world.

Sudie McGladdery stopped by the house digging 
up some trouble for both of us. She pines for 
Excitement in her life and says I need it worse. 
She know’d how to put it, as worse keeps
Lingering when it should travel on over the mountain. 

Mommy stepped to the front screen, the line marked
Between her eyes deeper than a spring branch. 
Sudie always means trouble. Mommy used to put
A stick to both of us to make us mind. Not that it 
Did much to slow Sudie, but I’d mostly straighten up. 

After hugging the kids and promising to be back soon,
We climbed into Sudie’s wreck of a car. While it looks 
More like it should live in the junk yard, it can pure fly. 
The radio blaring, trees flying by, air blowing through me. 
We took off down the mountain escaping time and trouble. 

Suspended in speed, captured in a free floating bubble,
My mind cleared and I got the jolt of my life. Sudden like
I knew in my gut where it counts that Orville was gone, 
He didn’t know I was running off like a fool, didn’t know
If I got home, didn’t know right from wrong from me. 

The tie, to strong, was pure broke. The car could go 
till midnight and take up again and go even more. 
Going back or not had nothing to do with us anymore. 
There was no us, there was only me. The trembling
Started somewhere deep inside, and I turned around. 

The new me needs to start somewhere else, not in this car
Going into trouble I don’t need and don’t want. Sudie
And her adventures will have to wait. Maybe the cracked
Mirror on the back porch will let me see me. A me who
Never was before and now has to take hard steps alone. 

Mommy and the kids get a part of this me, God sits
Up there somewhere expecting duty, a friend here
and about will need to be included, but now I am another
Person. She feels like a new pipped chick, seeing the sun
and feeling free air. Misery can whisper, but the new stays.

failing,

    flailing,

           falling

              into the
                     
                           abysss. 

                                   
                                           reclaiming the light.
                      climbing,
 clawing,

                                                                           struggling, striving, somehow surviving 

                                                         …Typical Tuesday