Writing

A Short Life

 Every day a desire.

The cardinal is a single drop of blood on the birch tree’s white arm.

A long day in a short life.

Don’t ask me what my problem is because you’ll be in for a long answer.

I woke up screaming these words in my head: “Why the FURNITURE am I awake right now!” Only the word furniture wasn’t really furniture. That’s just what my phone suggested I type instead of xxxx.

Another night’s sleep, another opportunity to further define these boob wrinkles.

Hey, when did I put on this turtleneck? Oh, that’s just my actual neck.

How am I? I’m wearing a broom skirt as a sundress. That’s how I am.

That’s it. If my underwear doesn’t fit right, I’m throwing it out. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

I must be feeling a little better because my pissed off is back.

Every time I look at potatoes, I think “Taters gonna state.”

Between now and later, there is nothing but time.

I’ve discovered a private, out-of-the-way place to discuss my greatest hopes and deepest fears. It’s called the internet.

Someone on a Christian radio station just said that God will “supply” me with all my needs. That’s right. Because God is just like Walmart.

I am having trouble operating heavy machinery right now. By heavy machinery, I mean my cell phone.

Last night’s infusion mostly went into the skin surrounding my elbow. Now I have an elbow boobie. For five bucks, I’ll let you fondle my elbow boobie.

I want to stock every closet, cabinet, and cubby in our home with sex toys, then hold an open house. It’s the only way to get someone to buy this place.

I’m walking backwards in an effort to make time go in reverse.

I feel like that ride at the carnival that’s about to break. You know the one.

My hairdresser asked me if I “tucked,” and I said, “No, my penis is invisible.” What she actually wanted to know was whether I tuck my hair behind my ears.

You know you’re having a bad day when you get mad at your chihuahua for not putting her toys away.

In the spirit of us all being one, whenever you accomplish something great, I’m going to put it on my resume.

I just checked the Dalai Lama’s Facebook feed to see if it’s anything like mine. It’s not.

Today when I wasn’t wearing any clothing, my husband grabbed me—not for sex but to do a quick all-over mole check. Thanks for keeping me safe, honey. Safe and chaste.

I think my mother was ultimately a good person who, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, watered the wrong seeds during her lifetime. To be more accurate, she doused those seeds in alcohol.

I’m pretty sure Hayden thinks my flute is a squeaky toy for humans.

I should go to the bookstore with several copies of one of my poems, paste a copy inside all the poetry journals that are available (Poetry, Boulevard, Tin House, and so forth), then list those publications in my bio as places my work has appeared. Because it would be true.

If we keep calling windchills negative, we’re going to give them a complex.

I feel like the whispering prairie is talking about me behind my back. Grass can be such a gossip. It never learned how to hold its tongue.

If she wants her photo taken, then by all means shoot the messenger.

Tonight I tried to draw a phallus, but it ended up looking like a femur. Long time, no see.

I keep reading “wind-powered organism” as “wind-powered orgasm.”

I just misread the news headline “Unique Lodging Options” as “Unique Longdong Options.”

More and more, professional attire feels like some sort of costume.

On my way home from a meeting tonight, a nice man on the street kept waving and waving at me. It was so sweet. Something must have been wrong with his hand, though, because all he could wave was his middle finger. Poor guy.

My husband just starred in a Google Glass video. I always knew I’d one day be a celebrity’s arm candy.

Something started growing on my nose last night. I think it’s another nose.

I’ve invented a Ziploc Stupid Bag: It’s called the workplace.

The next time you hear someone in Kansas City refer to “the other side” of Troost, your reply should be, “Oh, you mean the west side?” It will break that person’s brain in a whole new way.

My growing-out pixie or, as I like to call it, my bob-mullet.

I really got lucky with my husband. It’s not easy finding a straight man who likes Depeche Mode.

I see my young face in my current face about as readily as I see a poem in a bowl of alphabet soup.

The way to a man’s heart is through his pericardium.

On playing the flute: Tone. Technique. Articulation. Intonation. Vibrato. Breathing. Each of these is needed to make the instrument sing, which in turn allows the body to sing. Today, I got my tone back. Now my body is electric.

My husband goes back to work tomorrow, which will give me more one-on-one time with my chihuahua.

It’s strange being home without my husband. My chihuahua and I are like a tricycle that’s lost one of its wheels.

The yard is dark with starlings.

I am sitting in the dark because the light switch is an inch beyond my reach.

I’m trying to rewrite Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as “Song of My Gas,” but it’s just not turning out right.

I’m thinking about opening a cuddling business to pay for flute music and poetry books. I need a business plan.

I’m wearing a heating pad as a crown because I have a royal pain.

There should be a setting on this heating pad called “Hell” because that’s how hot I need it to be. The highest setting is “6.” I need “666.”

Half a Mannequin

I’ve decided to put an excerpt of a poem in the memo line for each check I write. Just another way to curate and disseminate poetry content.

If I had to be half a mannequin, I don’t know if I’d rather be the top half or the bottom half.

My hair and I have entered an awkward phase in our relationship.

I want to be a moth in my next life. The cocoon appeals to me far more than the womb.

When does inquiry into illness become an inquisition against the body?

I think I’ll induce a temporary chemical lobotomy by taking lorazepam. Then I’ll stare at the wall like a good girl.

If a form asks what state I live in, is “Chaos” an appropriate response?

The dog woke me up just in time to watch this great NutriBullet infomercial.

After we swallowed one another, we contained the world.

Music is like a second heartbeat.

Someone has short-sheeted my life.

Ghosts keep following me home. The living tell me I shouldn’t feed them, so I do.

Last night I dreamed that I cooked myself for dinner. Ten minutes. One pot of boiling water. Enough to serve all my friends—and one enemy.

I came home tonight smelling like other people, and I liked it.

I will not give thanks for anything I do that causes another living being to suffer.

I’ve been wearing this day inside out and backwards.

Sometimes breath passes for language.

Today, I asked my husband to bring me some almonds. He misunderstood me and went off in search of condoms.

The long arm of the blah.

If I collect enough books, my belongings will be so heavy I won’t ever be able to run away from home.

I’m trying to live like a hamster: little piles of the things that sustain me tucked all around my living space.

Sometimes I mistake the table of contents of a literary journal for a poem, and I think, This poem is really weird.

I am a pajama-based life form.

Erotic or chihuahua? While watching television, I feel a tongue begin to lick my big toe.

Erotic or chihuahua? Something warm presses against me while I am sleeping.

Erotic or chihuahua? I yawn, and suddenly there is a tongue in my mouth.

Erotic or chihuahua? Something brings me little gifts each day, tokens of affection. A squeaky toy. A ball.

Erotic or chihuahua? Something says, I could nuzzle in your bosom for hours. I will never leave you.

Erotic or chihuahua? Something goes to pieces whenever my husband and I kiss. Something cries. Something wails. Something tries to wedge itself between us.

Erotic or chihuahua? Something kicks my husband in the back repeatedly until he is forced to get out of bed. Then it rolls over and says, “Hold me.

Erotic or chihuahua? Something says, I will watch bad movies with you, all the ones you love. Ice Castles. Legend. Sweet November. That is how devoted I am to you.

Marriage, Part Three

Marriage —

A game of rock, paper, scissors where both parties keep choosing rock.

Marriage —

Partner 1: The bird flies near me.

Partner 2: The bird flies through me.

Marriage —

In the living room, my husband antagonizes me with a teddy bear hand puppet before running around in circles singing “Brown Sugar.”

Marriage —

My husband chases me through the house after realizing I’ve covertly filmed him running around in circles singing “Brown Sugar” while wearing a teddy bear hand puppet. He makes me promise I’ll never show it to anyone. I agree, knowing the power lies not in sharing the video but rather in having the video.

Marriage —

My husband and I agree that we really need to get out of the house. Seven hours later, we still haven’t made it out of the house. Things are not looking promising for the next seven hours, either.

Marriage —

Partner 1: I’m agreeing with you.

Partner 2: No, I’m agreeing with you.

Partner 1: No, I’m agreeing with you.

Partner 2: No, I’m agreeing with you.

Partner 1: No, I’m agreeing with you.

Partner 2: No, I’m agreeing with you.

Marriage —

My husband is using a flashlight to navigate his way through our house because it’s so dark in here. It’s 4 p.m.

Marriage —

My husband has placed the flashlight in his mouth. His cheeks are glowing red. He says the light is illuminating the vitreous gel inside his eyes.

Marriage —

My husband always eats half a banana and leaves the other half to die a slow, awkward death on the kitchen counter.

Marriage —

There’s a laundry standoff, and we’re both out of underwear.

Marriage —

I thought I’d discovered a new life form growing out of the sofa, then I realized it was just my husband taking a nap with his head wedged between two seat cushions.

Marriage —

Partner 2: Will you empty the dishwasher?

Partner 1: The dishes need to cool off.

Partner 2: How long will that take?

Partner 1: At least several days.

Marriage —

Partner 2: You can’t kiss me right now.

Partner 1: Why not?

Partner 2: I just put on lip gloss, and I don’t want it to get messed up.

Partner 1: Can I kiss you later?

Partner 2: We’ll see.

Marriage, Part Two

Marriage —

Partner 1: I made soup.

Partner 2: Oh, great!

Partner 1: I made soup for myself.

Marriage —

Partner 2: I need you to do _______ and _______ and _______ and _______ and _______.

Partner 1: (In robot voice) Too many inputs. Overload. Must shut down.

Marriage —

Partner 1: Where did all the candy go?

Marriage —

Partner 2: I wish you talked to me the way you talk to Google Glass.

Partner 1: You want me to give you voice commands?

Marriage —

Partner 2: Take me out to dinner.

Partner 1: Shut up.

Marriage —

Partner 1: I made this five-course meal for you.

Partner 2: It’s five kinds of raw, chopped vegetables.

If my husband and I ever renew our wedding vows, this will be what I say to him:

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. ― Jorge Luis Borges

Marriage ―

I remind my husband to call his father. He knows why he needs to do so. The day wears on. My husband forgets, or he lets himself forget. The last thing my father-in-law said to my husband was, I am so lonely. So lonely without her.

Marriage ―

My husband waits until he’s two hours late to call and let me know he’s running late.

Marriage ―

My husband accidentally calls me by our dog’s name several times a day.

Marriage —

Partner 1: Are you really eating that for breakfast? Cake and soda?

Partner 2: Yes.

Marriage —

The Thorntons and the Martins have very different ways of dealing with adversity. The Martins are, as their name implies, wispy as little birds tossed on difficulty’s winds. The Thorntons, also true to their name, shoot a ton of thorns when challenged. (Thornton is my mother’s maiden name. It’s where I get my sting.)

Marriage —

Partner 1: When someone closes a door, turn around and walk away.

Partner 2: When someone closes a door, break down the entire wall.

Marriage, Part One

Marriage —

Partner 1: I can’t talk to you without taking anxiety medicine.

Partner 2: I can’t talk to you without drinking soda.

Marriage —

I get it. Sometimes I am aimless. Sometimes I dawdle. Sometimes I get distracted. There are times when my husband is completely justified in hurrying me along. But when I am in the middle of having a bowel movement? That is not one of those times.

Marriage —

Partner 1: Even though I don’t like you, I like everything about you.

Marriage —

Partner 1: I don’t want to be around anyone smart.

Partner 2: You’re safe with me.

Marriage —

Partner 1: What about when I wear hats? Do you like me more then?

Partner 2: No.

Marriage —

In which Partner 1 plays menacing metal tunes on his digital guitar.

In which Partner 2 learns to play “Teenager” by the Deftones on her flute, then takes the piece up an octave.

Marriage —

Partner 1: You smell so good today. What’s different?

Partner 2: I bathed.

Marriage —

Partner 2: Why do you keep attaching yourself to me when I enter the room?

Partner 1: Because I’m playing Tetris, but with people.

Marriage —

Partner 2: Let’s go to the bookstore.

Partner 1: Sure. Why don’t we go to __________.

Partner 2: Not that one. They only have smart books.

Marriage —

Partner 1: Do you see this bag of chips? Eat no more than one-half of this bag. Half. H-A-L-F. No more than that. (Draws an invisible line down the middle of the bag with right index finger.)

This Day

I emailed my husband a poem, and he replied by sending me a to-do list.

I am a long drive through ugly country.

Sometimes, we need to give people more than they deserve.

Today, the sun rises over endless fields of what.

I’m having a strange day in which everything my left hand touches feels rough and everything my right hand touches feels smooth.

Sometimes I feel like a faint pencil line under all the wrong words.

I want so much for this day.

I sing sweet songs while I piddle around the house, just like my mother did. My husband studies the qualities of maple leaves scattered on a table, just like his father would.

Driven to abstraction.

I just saw a flock of birds flying in the shape of a giant bird.

Giving Thanks

I am thankful that my entry and exit wounds are only emotional, not physical. I am thankful that I have no gunshot-related defects. I am thankful that I am not lying dead on an examination table while someone makes note of my BMI, my skin pigmentation, the color of my hair, the scleral and conjunctival surfaces of my left eye which—at the time of examination—is my only eye.

I am thankful that my flip flops were not found lying west of me in the roadway.

I am thankful that the examiner cannot open me up and look at my glistening, transparent heart. Thankful that I have not left tissue fragments on the exterior surface of a police officer’s motor vehicle, that there is no dessication or drying present within my soft tissue. Thankful that I have not been described as grunting, as aggressive, as having the most aggressive face ever seen on a person. That I have not been described as crazy. Just crazy.

I am thankful that the only weapon I am perceived to have is my voice. Thankful that my hands were not bagged to save any trace of evidence, that I did not lie in the road dead for more than four hours. That I have not been reduced to the swabs taken from my shirt, from my shorts, from my palms, from the backs of my hands, from my fingernails, from the roadway, from the thigh of the police officer’s pants, from the left side of his pants, from his collar, from the tissue I left on the police officer’s front door, from his back door, from his door mirror, and from the inside of his door handle.

I am thankful that I did not lose consciousness immediately from the head wound to my face, that I was not unprotected when I collapsed, that the boney prominences on the right side of my forehead and cheek were not abraded as the road stopped my fall. I am thankful that my flip flops were not found lying west of me in the roadway and that my red baseball cap was not found near the police officer’s vehicle.

I give thanks on this day. Thank you. Thank you. Amen.

The Poem and the Body, the Body and the Poem

I intended to write a piece on poetry yesterday, but instead I experienced a tear in my retina. Right eye. Noonish. I saw white lights like fireworks, followed by a hovering gray blob that obscured my vision. It was roughly the shape of an acorn cap or a winter hat with a fuzzy ball on top. An ophthalmologist at KU Medical Center saw me right away. He looked deep into my vitreous gel with a fancy headlamp that made him look like he was about to go spelunking and exclaimed, I see the acorn in your eye! I thought he was making a joke, but apparently he could see a bundle of proteins torn from my retinal lining floating in the gel.

Why does the poetic image communicate faster than other forms? A few years ago, I asked this very question on Facebook and then proceeded to answer it myself. How annoying of me. My answer was as follows:

Arthur Koestler has an interesting theory. He says poetry requires thinking on a third plane, a kind of “bisociation,” meaning perceiving a situation or an idea in two individually consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference. This bisociation disturbs our patterns of thinking/feeling and causes a crisis, which requires a third plane of thinking/feeling to arise, one that is antithetical to but that does not negate the strife of the two.

Since this moment of entry into the poem is a moment of crisis, I would argue that we respond to the crisis the way we are hard-wired to respond to all crises—as quickly as possible. Our entry into the poem is similar to pulling a hand away from a scalding object before realizing on a conscious level that the object is hot. It’s instinctual, a survival tactic. Perhaps bisociation in poetry works on this level as well—because of the crisis the poem presents, we move swiftly to a different mode of thinking/feeling that allows us to enter the poem without completely fracturing our identities, without obliterating our ways of seeing and moving through the world. Bisociation is a way of surviving the poem, of seeing the world as we experience it on a day-to-day level, then seeing the world of the poem itself, then seeing a plane on which to stand, one that straddles the two and gives the reader a place to exist, to breathe.

Perhaps this is why poems work on us so quickly, why the image communicates faster in poetry than in other forms of writing. Precisely because poems put us in crisis.

I removed that post from Facebook years ago, but I stashed it in my poetry files. I came across it today and appreciated it as one way to understand how poems work. I also appreciated my former self for leaving me this trace. It could prove useful when people ask me what poems are, how the mean, and under what conditions they operate.

If you look at a vertical sagittal section of the human eye, you are supposed to see something that resembles a camera. That’s not what I see. I see an angelfish without the fins. I’m sure this says something fundamental about me. The watery fish in the head. The brain home to an aquarium. The two specimens that cannot swim, that cannot escape, that do my bidding, that are forced to document the production.

In his poem “Trace,” Eric Pankey writes: To occupy space is to shape it. / Snow, slantwise, is not white / But a murk of winter-black basalt. / In the gullied, alluvial distances, / On the swallow-scored air, / Each erasure is a new trace.

Having a torn retina is not without its consequences. I feel like a mean girl punched me in the eye. Maybe at a bar. Maybe after I looked at her the wrong way. Maybe after she mistook the fireworks in my eyes for something I never intended.

If you look closely enough at a poem while wearing a headlamp, you can enter its recesses and observe the detail held within its vitreous gel. What drifts and where. What has lost viscosity with age and use. What holds fast. But when you occupy the poem, you change it. We change things by looking. There is no way around this.

When I told my husband about my retina, he asked if reading poetry might have caused the tear. I said poetry had no bearing on what happened. He seems to think poetry leads to disaster. I’ve tried to tell him for years now that we all lead ourselves to disaster, with or without poetry. Poems simply document the path from cradle to grave; from point of entry to point of no exit; from one dark, craggy landmark to another.

Origami

I grew up eating okra, which my mother breaded and fried. I never knew until I moved to Kansas City and bought a bag of frozen okra that it was hairy on the outside and slimy on the inside. I didn’t know the seeds were soft and moved within the mouth in an unsettling manner, avoiding the tongue and slipping down the throat. Okra and I parted ways after our tryst in the frozen food section of the Piggly Wiggly at 51st and Main, but I see it sometimes in gumbo and imagine what we might have become if we had stayed together all these years.

I feel like I’m in a car driving down a dark road, just two headlights between me and the black world.

I read a poem today that was so good I had to stop reading poems. It wasn’t about okra. It was about family. It was one of those poems that makes me cry and pace and ultimately climb the stairs to the main bedroom, at which point I consider the unmade bed and its implicit invitation to ride out the rest of my day there in the disturbing drift of silence and synthetic down.

Now I’m sitting at the computer wondering what comes after silence. I looked to the moon for an answer, but it seems to have vacated the sky. I don’t trust this level of darkness.

My husband will be home soon enough to invade my senses in the best or worst of ways. My tongue is already burning. My arms tingle. I don’t know if my body will accept or reject the presence of another human being in its vicinity.

There are not enough light bulbs to illuminate this room. I feel like I’m in a car driving down a night road, only two headlights between me and the black world. But I am not moving. I just keep staring at the same two monitors and, behind them, the same set of bookshelves—one shelf sports a thumb piano, the other a rusted monkey with articulated arms and legs.

Maybe I want poems to be pop-up books or choose-your-own-adventure verses. Maybe I want them to be origami. You would buy them flat, and the poem would be revealed as you folded the paper into the proper form.

I wonder if I could sauté okra in water and if I could learn to like it that way, if I could ever eat it without thinking of my mother. I wonder if my husband could lasso the sun and place it on my desk like a lamp. If not, maybe he could take me to the lighting section at IKEA. I could stand under all those fixtures and pretend to be Cinderella at the ball. Someday I will make my own light, like the stonefish or the false moray eel. I will be the bright thing in the shadows.

My CPU warms my feet. The heat makes me think something is curled up next to me, a small being in need of comfort.

Ring of Fire

Misread of the day: Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be itchy.

We don’t always know the whole story, and the whole story isn’t always ours to know.

My thoughts are like cicadas: They burrow underground for years before returning to the surface to scream from the trees.

My life is a ripe fruit with a bruise hidden deep inside.

Some days, I feel like a paramecium lodged inside my own brain.

I’ve gone from one monitor to two. Pretty soon, I’ll be surrounded by monitors—not exactly a ring of fire, but one of heat and light.

The product of consumption attempts to consume itself.

Hayden stood on my chest this morning until I agreed to get out of bed.

I just watched a video of a pet pig being massaged with a fork.

Every day, I make sure my dog knows the love she never knew before we met.