Where Babies Come From (Free Write)

Babies come from
flour that has puffed over
tin jar walls, and seems to disappear
but actually floats together
to a secret meeting place
in the garden, to make a floury
whole wheat baby.

Copper sulfate reflects blue light
and that is why the sky is blue.

The part of your brain
that is your memory
is locked in a nutshell -
thick, brown, like my bedroom door, hard to crack -
locked so that memory won't seep into the sack
that is your imagination (a fishnet sack, like the French
carry at the marketplace to hold fruits and veggies, when empty
you can ball it up very small) and there are these separations
in your brain, God made them, God help them,
so that you can distinguish what is real
from what is pretend.

Printmaking

In the style of old newspapers - sepia ink lines - a hand fisted around fabric, the same fabric it is printed on, a delicate, sheer fabric. What is ownership?

Hell

boomp3.com

Next Year !!!

Frida 4 !

She places the gray rectangle of shadow
above her chin, delicately as a name card
at a dinner setting. It is a simple truth –
that the sun's angle would darken this pattern -

a math she calculates steadily, the way
she pulls silver through her earlobes.

This face invents her –
From it the audience can guess
of her spine, of her hips and wide toes -
It is a face that she’s chosen, a freedom
Known only to painters, to poets and creators.

She sits potted
before the mirror, tracing
over and over, her own contours
until the whole thing is blurred
and strange. Until it is time to reinvent
each line. She paints
the endless Mexican desert
behind her pupils. She sculpts her chin,
purses the red tin of her lips.


As she works she imagines
tomorrow’s costume, the piles
of color that beg her to let them fall
over her frame at a party,
that want their weight draped around her ankles
that want to hide her whole thing
behind a shadowless, shapeless yellow.

Found Things

I forget the difference:
Birds and People

The people in the other room
Whose faces I never see, I hear
That they have nose rings
Or blonde hair, features that hold
a swift confidence, a light and flexible neck
Whatever their faces, I know
Their voices; muffled squeaks and squabbles
that come quickly beneath the door
And through whatever spaces
our walls allow.

I forget the difference:
Birds and People
Sewing nests out of found things like
shoe lace or poetry or feathers or melody.

What It Is

God sprinkles
wheat sprigs
from heaven
and birds use them
to make nests in my hair
and they also use
down feathers
from Spencer's bed.

Spring ends and eggs hatch and winter eats them and my silence grows.

I forget the difference:
Birds and People.
It is like dreadlocks
It is like branches
It is like woven leather
It is like barbed iron
It is like a beehive it is like a tumbler.