Ephemera

Ribbety

When we fail to recognize sanism and ableism in all its forms, we fail to protect ourselves and each other.

Give us ribbety or give us death. — Sign at No Kings Protest

Me: I’m going to have a nice day.

My Intestines: Not so fast.

A group of frogs can be called an army, a chorus, or a colony. I call a group of frogs a democracy.

I used to want to be the cylindrical container that shot through the pneumatic tube at the bank. I also wanted to be the money inside the container. Anything to not be human.

I made a bunch of big decisions, I’m in the bed, and the life partner is bringing me no-bake cookies, ice cream, and caramel corn is how I am. My therapist said this is OK. I’m not so sure.

I stole the last Zevia in the house from the life partner is how I am.

I’d rather be too soft for this world than too hard.

I’m eating caramel corn while lying in bed with my dog on me is how I am.

We can be born after we’re born, and it doesn’t need to happen in a religious framework.

The Harvest Moon Supermoon and the Waning Gibbous Moon are stealing my dreams. I need those dreams. They’re for me, not for various and sundry moons.

Half of what you’ve done has already been done before and by half I mean all.

Obstacles and Destinations

The life partner has informed me that he’s no longer angry with me. We just woke up. We haven’t even interacted today.

The white-crowned sparrows have arrived for the winter, which means joy has taken up residence in this desert.

I just thought about baby animals, and I’m suddenly very happy.

When I see nothing but darkness, teach me to see the dark. When I hear nothing but darkness, teach me to hear the dark. When I feel nothing but darkness, teach me to feel the dark. When I realize I am darkness, teach me to love the dark that I am. The darkness of my body. The darkness of my mind. The darkness I came from and will return to. The darkness that is all that is.

I would really love to be in a room where I feel wanted, welcome, like I don’t have to hide essential parts of myself, where I don’t have to listen to things that are painful and othering, and where I can speak in full voice without shame and trepidation.

When you think you’re the destination, but you’re just the obstacle.

The only thing worse than having wet hair is having wet hair in a new place.

Your cracks are how the universe enters you.

I just googled what is a sand time thing called is how I am.

I wrapped my king-sized chenille blanket around my waist and am wearing it like a sarong is how I am.

Sentence from my dream: Like gods in Greek myths, we are gilded, guilted, and gutted.

You’d think I’d put all my dopamine to better use, but no. I make fiddly spreadsheets.

I’m doing a deep dive into facts and fictions about the Osage orange is how I am.

A list of my bad habits:

1. All of them.


This Ink Is a Suture

I dreamed I made millions writing Mormon erotica.

𒆪𒋆

That translates as Kushim and is the first known record of a person in writing.

The largest known human coprolite is 1,200 years old. It’s 20 centimeters long and 5 centimeters wide and was discovered in 1972 in an ancient Viking settlement in York, England.

It’s weird how old some things are, like murder.

Tonight, a fellow writer asked why I write about Oklahoma and my family’s history there, as if writing about the past and the place that made me who I am is of no value. It’s 2025, and you live in Utah, he said. I write about the present, too. But poets have pasts, and those pasts matter. They inform the present and the future. We live in many worlds and many timelines. Not everything is now, though then becomes now when we breathe life back into it.

I just learned that some canaries were kept in cages with oxygen tanks so they could survive after warning miners about dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.

And this ink is a suture. And this paper is a body. And this poem is a prayer for healing written one stitch at a time.

Will Journavx make me feel like I’m still living in a democracy?

I have no words to meet this moment.

We’re back in Tucson. A northern cardinal, a neighbor, and the latest issue of Meat for Tea welcomed us home. My body hasn’t figured out that it’s no longer in motion.

I’m here to share. I’m here to learn. I’m here for joy, surprise, and to feel awe shoot through me like sudden light. Every one of you is a purveyor of awe. Here, now. Then, again. Always.

I’m waiting for you in spring. Make your way to me through winter.

As you sit on winter’s hard ground, remember that you may be someone’s spring.

And just like that, a poem brings me back to the world.

Your work matters, what you do in the world matters, and you matter. Thank you all for what you create, what you share, and for your kindness.

Desert Slopes

Poems are not office memos.

January 18: Fell asleep to a dog barking. Woke to wind howling. Inside it, the dog continues to bark, but all the desert slopes repeat now is wind and more wind.

I want to wallpaper my writing room with scenes from Days of Heaven and then write like that movie. That’s what my manuscript Crude is supposed to be. It’s supposed to sound like the narrator from Days of Heaven and look like everything in Days of Heaven.

I know less about existence than twin fawns who died inside their mother days before she would have given birth to them.

House sparrows aren’t sparrows. They’re weaver finches. (And that is how poets tell you the news.)

After all everybody is as their coffee maker is. Everybody is as the maker is quiet or loud. Everybody is as there is maker or no maker. That is what makes a people, makes their kind of brew, their kind of viscosity, their bitterness and their aftertaste, and their pouring and their sipping and their drinking. — Gertrude Stein(ish)

There’s a poem in my throat. I don’t want it there. I don’t even want it there.

Love is coming at me from every direction. That’s how I know we’re all dying.

My husband is up. He sounds like rain.

There was a time in my life when the answer to everything was poetry. It’s still that time.

It’s hard, but not impossible, to see a man as a hook.

New Year’s Goal: Write poems that make readers blister.

I just learned that white-tailed deer chase Canada geese. My friend Kelly would have loved knowing that.

I just got a nice rejection from a literary journal. The editor wrote, I’m grateful to have read your work, especially ‘Persephone.’ The last stanza is perfect. God. Damn.


It’s interesting how love expands when we’re scared but contracts when we’re angry, which is also just being scared.

Coming off the sudden stress of the past few days, I’m in a space that’s part relief, part surge of emotion. This means I may tell every single one of you that I love you—and mean it.

Some poems are like passivation layers on exposed aluminum. They protect the poet from vulnerabilities beneath the surface, maybe reader, too.

Some poems feel like licking an old sofa.

The light is moving. Slowly, slowly, the light.

Writing is breath. As breath, writing is life.

I hear the stars hidden in the blanket-swaddled sky. I hear them beating.

Just enough light these days to give thanks to darkness.

A wallpaper-installation company whose slogan is “We’ll help you get it up.”

Intellectual Surplus

I just clocked fifty-nine active zone minutes on Fitbit getting IKEA items out of their packaging.

A bobcat just walked by our house.

Now I know what my monsoon-season hair looks like. Not good.

I’m dressed like a flower so the bee who made his way into our home yesterday will land on me and I can walk him outside. I made nectar for him last night and placed it in a shallow dish. His name is Tucson but we call him Tuckie for short.

June 19, 2024
Don’t thank me for helping you grow if you grew at my expense.

There is no border in the heart.

I’ve got a lot going on here in Southern Arizona for a person who was intellectual surplus in Southern Utah.

I was desperate to exist in Southern Utah and am relieved that my existence is a given in Southern Arizona.

Tell me where you live without telling me where you live: I wake at 5 a.m. to be active while avoiding the heat, have a favorite saguaro that I photograph regularly, and nurture a love/hate relationship with javalinas.

I just received a box containing a box containing boxes.

Love: Why do I feel so heavy?

Me: Because you’re carrying me.

The longer we live, the longer we live in the past.

My dog and I eat spinach together on the anniversary of my last dog’s death.

We don’t have to be Sisyphus, pushing a rock up a hill forever. We don’t have to be Demosthenes, speaking with pebbles in our mouth.

Almost Land, Almost Air

Half the time, these doves fly wherever they want. The other half, they fly away from danger.

It’s warm today. Too warm for worries.

I sort everything for the move. A box for hate. A box for love. A box for confusion. A box for pain. In the end, everything’s in one box: the box of love. It’s overflowing.

If we can see ourselves in literature, we can see ourselves in the world.

You feel almost human, Tucson, just like your stately Saguaro. Or maybe I feel almost land, almost air, almost bird, almost snake, almost you, Tucson.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to superglue your cracked and bloodied feet and keep walking.

Sometimes all it takes is a neighbor reaching out with an armful of peaches to save us from disaster.

My neighbor appears to be pushing a stroller full of snacks down the trail. No child. No dog. Just snacks. Brilliant.

May winds blow birds your way.

It’s the time of year in which I worry ceaselessly about baby birds.

My dog is in the kitchen staring at the air fryer.

Ravens overhead and a pile of entrails on my back patio.

Catastrophic thinking: The tip of an agave spine is lodged in my finger. I’m obviously going to have to cut my whole hand off.

Traffic was at a standstill on the highway through Toquerville this morning. Two sheriffs and an animal shelter officer were trying to capture a pig who was on the loose.

Neonatal Pig

I moved a cobblestone in the yard and found a western fence lizard attempting to stay warm on this chilly morning. I carefully replaced the stone and apologized for the intrusion.

If you can love a chicken, you should be able to love a human being, but things aren’t always that simple.

I describe my complexion as neonatal pig.

I have so many things to do, but my dog is sleeping on my lap.

I hated the wind when I couldn’t escape the wind. Now the wind is gone. I miss the wind. I love the wind.

Facebook, how would I watch two rescued prairie dogs eat grape tomatoes without you?

Isn’t this why we’re all here? To postpone our own and each other’s departures? From life, I mean. From life.

This stone-heavy ball of hope. This gravel-slick hill before me.


It’s easier to forgive the dead for what they’ve done than to forgive the living for what they’re doing.

That beating? It’s the rhythm of death but also the rhythm of life.

When you feel trapped inside rooms you didn’t willingly enter, I’ll draw clouds on the ceilings so you can remember the sky.

When they run, they run away. They are us or us in other bodies.

Your heart will speak to you one thousand times today. Let it.

It’s hard to find your way when you don’t know where you are, and that’s pretty much how I feel every day: lost and longing but also curious and free—moving instinctually toward where I think I need to go, who I need to be, what I need to feel, and what I need to do.

The terrible reality is that health is more expensive than disease in this country.

Dreamed I attended my own funeral. I looked good.

Terror and awe. The lulling sounds of those words. Terror. Awe. Terror. Awe. A swing twitching in winter’s wind. A wooden metronome on an upright piano. Gauzy drapes sucked into and spit out of an open window.

I did not tar hope’s feathers.

Euphoric from the propofol used in this morning’s colonoscopy, I flop into bed to dream of cake and human kindness.

I love every bird who is singing and every bird who is silent.

To Gutting and Back

When we live through our deaths, we are reborn. When we live through the deaths of those we love, we die. Repeat. Repeat. Ad astra. Ad nauseum. Ad infinitum.


Because love is ruin. Love is ruin. All love leads to despair and back again to love, a Mobius strip, topological.


To wreckage and back again.

To gutting and back again.


Love scoops us clean and makes us more, more than whole, overfilled, stuffed.


Love is like just like that. We don’t have to know why. It’s precocious. It’s in the garden right now gleaning fallen pomegranates so others can eat, even birds, even slugs, even you.


You’ve no choice if you choose to love. It does not tip the emotion wheel to one side, the one you like. Joy grows its roots in hell. Jung said that, or something like it. And grows its leaves in heaven.


Yin yang. Here there. One space that is t/here. I’ve said this before. All of this before. BeforeAfter. T/hereT/here. LightDark. YinYinYangYang. Chitty chitty bang bang.


No binaries or even trinaries. One. One. All one. AllOne. OneAll that reduces to our single sound, our collective O.


O of want, that old bone Pinksy saw on the shore of his imagination. O of openness. O of passage.


O as in zero, which is all, not none. I’ve said this all before. BefOre. Don’t you feel it here in Southern Utahm in our ore? Or …


Nevermind. I don’t mind. I tried here. I really tried.


Take a little ride on my donkey, which is my surrey with the fringe on top, which is an American Airlines ticket and my seat in its belly. Don’t wail. I’ll be alright. We all will.


I’m going home. I’m going home. Oklahoma, I’m coming home.


In parting, try to choose love. Because without it? What are you and what is anyone to you and why are you even on this glorious, broken Earth that we all need to share and share alike, not just with each other but with all living beings, all lands holy and desecrated, all trail leading out and out, away always away, but also back again.


Wherever you find yourself, even if you find yourself lost, you can always map your way back with love, which is greater than any one man.


Amen.

Ikigai

I am grateful for this pain. This pain is a compass. This pain is a signal. This pain is my dearest friend, my greatest protector, my guide, my heart. This pain is everything.

Me: I’m going to stay up late. I do my best writing at night

Also Me: In bed at 9:29 p.m.

I’d rather be trampled by horses than trammeled by poets.

The word of the day is ikigai, the convergence of one’s personal passions, beliefs, values, and vocations, translated loosely as one’s reason for being. What’s your reason for being?

As long as there are poets, something will survive.

There are lots of ways to lose if your focus is love. Lots of ways to gain if your focus is power. Pay attention to what you’re losing and what you’re gaining.

July 6, 2023
Some folks: You chose this [painful or tragic thing].

Me: You didn’t choose this [painful or tragic thing], but you can choose how to respond to this [painful or tragic thing].

Bleary, I just misread “The Middle Ages” as “The Middle Oranges.” Now, I can’t stop thinking about The Middle Oranges, that period in history that can be divided into Early Oranges, High Oranges, and Late Middle Oranges.

Maybe, in all those words Frank O’Hara wrote about orange, he said something about The Middle Oranges. We’ll never know, will we?

I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

— Frank O’Hara, from “Why I Am Not a Painter”

Gray wind. Gray branches. A horse on the hill and no ships in sight.

My suffering dies inside Ocean Vuong’s poems.

Lay it all aside and love.

To those who live with trauma: I’m glad you survived; I’m sorry you lived through what you lived through; I see you; I love you; I carry you in my heart.

It’s OK to buy blueberries and not eat them all. We all love imperfectly.

Morning: fire. Evening: fire. The first, literal, accidental, and brief. The second, metaphorical, intentional, and eternal.

Emotion is consistent. It’s only specific emotional states, which we perceive as separate from emotion as a whole, that are inconsistent. We learn that. We learn that we feel happy or sad or joyful or sorrowful or, or, or, ad nauseam. We cleave and cleave emotion until it’s all these little slices of pie sitting beside each other or across from each other. We’re doing the separating. We’re creating the binaries, the opposites. Emotion is emotion. It’s a whole. And, as a whole, it’s a constant.

Our Bodies Are Rentals

I notice this pain. I feel this pain. I acknowledge this pain. I give myself permission to release this pain, even for a moment. I give myself permission to let this pain go.

Vial my longing. Flush my joy. Pump despair from my lungs. Displace the air that holds me up, even in water, that lets me float like a buoy in the cottonmouth-thick lake. Sterilize me. Ethereize me. On Prufrock’s table, label me. Tag me. Take whatever makes me.

In three of the locust’s leaves: perfect circles chewed away; perfect holes; perfect absences. What remains, what surrounds, what the altered leaves tell us about presence and absence. Here and gone. Now and then. An encircling. A staying. A leafing anyway, with and without. You were one leaf once, whole. You are still whole, even with that hole. The hole is part of your whole now. And now. And now. And ever. Good morning.

Living with. Healing with. Loving with.

With others. With(in) ourselves.

It’s all the land I love.

I’m at risk of being overly involved in the lives of animals, the life of the Earth, and the lives of humans—especially my chosen and biological families and every child who enters or has entered or will enter this hairy, hoofed world.


Dear girl-child: Where do you go when you’re nowhere? Everywhere?

Those who other conditionally still other. Under what conditions are you willing to be othered by those who conditionally other?

Failbrella: When your umbrella flips inside out in the wind then slips from your hands in the wind then manages to open inside your passenger seat as you’re driving then gets stuck in your coat some goshdarn way when you try to open it after emerging from your vehicle to brave even more rain and wind.

Jungbrella: When all these things happen right after you’ve seen your Jungian therapist, so you can get all deep-myth about every single mishap.

Love is a non-count noun.

Our bodies are rentals. Our home is the universe.

Chronically Ill? Read poems.

(Chronically, I’ll read poems.)

There are two kinds of people: those who love you and everyone else.

PrairyErth. We are one.

As astra per aspera.

Just abandoned a poem because it’s past my bedtime and I don’t have time to wrestle with it. Come easy or go home, poems.

An attention difference thing I did: Googled “on-ramp” to see if it’s hyphenated, accidentally typed “on rap” instead, then spent hours learning all about the history of rap.