Bone

this happened

eighteen I crawled through the duplex window into Wayne’s bed the rotten middle his fists all night I screamed ran down the street screaming neighbors called the police who knew Wayne I crawled into him what I expected love he called me love his fists all night I screamed ran down the street bruised black eyes broke broken broken rib I thought this was normal my normal the rotten middle his fists I a girl running screaming down the street every other night police sirens again again again no job no car a girl screaming running down the street waiting for the police who knew him my normal the rotten middle his fists I a girl running down the street screaming Wayne the police knew his name knew my me the girl running down the street screaming all night screaming & screaming & screaming then my dad sent me a bus ticket

*

Dear Henry,

my friend brought me a bear and I lived with the bear in my house we were quite happy the bear and I then my friend came back and told me he had to chop off the bear's paws I would have to eat them I sucked the meat out of one paw disgusted and filled with grief now I'm eating an avocado that tastes like fifty-five acres of California heartland it tastes like Frida Kahlo's dream of having a baby it tastes like sugar and sweet-grass and cream and butter and cotton bed sheets dried on a clothes-line in the hot sun and it tastes of the cornfields that spread across Illinois this avocado came into my hands like Jesus on a bender I'm not kidding

*

this happened

he found me at the commune everyone there told me not to go with him he was a bad man but I loved him he shot speed into his arm his needles his tiny packet of white powder his spoon then he spent hours and hours drawing pictures of women with huge breasts on ruled paper with a blue ball point pen and he hit me if I interrupted sometimes he hit me for fun and I ran down the street screaming then came back I always came back his job was drug dealer he told me I could take his car if I wanted to get away and I tried but I had never driven a stick shift I didn't know how I didn't know how to escape and he stood on the porch laughing at me

I finally figured out how to run away I had to actually run

*

Dear Henry,

I was inside an old Pentecostal church where cakes were being auctioned I tried to buy a perfect tiny orange cake for you I told the auctioneer I have three dollars but the auctioneer said sorry this cake is fifty dollars I stuffed a giant wooden crucifix into my suitcase I sat in a chair smoked a cigar what are you doing here

*
this happened

I got a job at a nursing home but he found me again and he found out that I fucked his brother for revenge I was living in my own little apartment I was so happy there but I went to live with him in a big white house with an open meadow behind it the white house terrified me there were no neighbors to go run to why did I go why  why    why  The Johnny Cash psychiatrist told me it was because violence was all I had ever known it was my normal 

* 
Dear Henry,

we were sitting in your yard when Violet turned to me and said I want a huge rabbit I jumped in my red Nancy Drew convertible and headed out in the rain as I drove the road disappeared I jumped into a powerboat on the ocean big waves rolled no sign of the city I kept my foot on the gas turned a corner there was a pet store with crates holding giant rabbits I looked in each crate to make sure they were open so the rabbits wouldn't drown the store owner said your life vest is too loose he tried to tighten it then said I’m sorry you're too small as I examined each rabbit the first had a sad disfigured face with one eyeball down near his throat the other rabbits were okay I was in a hurry but not hurrying I let the disfigured rabbit swim away then I saw a rabbit with markings like a Siamese cat a deep chocolate colored head and a white body with chocolate feet I held him and kissed his head then let him swim away remembering how you mistreated your dog finally I found a rabbit for Violet gray with long fur and eyes like God he looked at me with such love

*

this happened

he finally got tired of hitting me so he put a gun to my head he put a gun to my head then he put the gun down and punched me and punched me finally I swerved and he punched the wall and broke his thumb he cried!!! then he drove to the hospital and I called a friend from work and her mother showed up in a big station wagon and we put my stuff in it some clothes and my violin and my guitar and I never saw him again

*

Dear Henry,

in Chicago my son was in jail you had been abducted by aliens and recently returned you said wear the green dress which I kicked under the bed Violet’s car broke down and I placed round tables covered with white cloths embroidered with Napoleon’s royal bee crest up and down Webster Avenue summer undulated my hair a blond tangle of sweat my feet were buried in hot asphalt the heat rose up through my body like a kundalini picnic all set about with fever trees now a pure god a nasty little salamander lives with you in my heart

*

this is who I am now

animal insistence turned my velvet body to leathery grit arms & legs clammy skin a breath off corporeal temperature shivering dog calm trudge pant & blunt I ate mercury as a child broken thermometers bright pools on the bedroom floor gums not yet black not yet turned a grand tolling into children’s rectums removed it from a velvet lined case passed it with Jesus care one child to the next & I dropped it shattered globs silver animals wriggling toward a fairy-tale center I scooped them into my mouth I am about to die or win a great award a shivering dog inside you life swings onto the gridded macadam as my mother in the driver's seat turns smiles & waves she holds a cigarette a bottle of gin & a gun

this happened

my chemical fire hums when propane is forced through the pipes the pipes inside my walls whistle high birds on fire when I turn on the heater elder madronas drip and burn fluorescent in the primal sway in the animal ship the manic needle in my eyeball when we say medicine it is a red stigmata canvas when we say panic it is the guts of the cottage in the woods with the graham cracker door gumdrop windows where wolf crouches on the roof lick lick licking himself I choke at the worst possible moment smash the rabbit saint who gave his life for my glue the Palace of Versailles blisters in my shoes I want to tell you how my feet burn how bright steam rises from the dog’s bowl did I ever really dance in a sweet short dress flared at the hips did I prime did I tango?

*

Dear Henry,

you and my cat were bit by a scorpion a terrible deathly bite I had to choose who to save because I didn’t have enough money for two doctors I chose my cat the three of us drove onto the Nestucca ferry landing a long uphill ramp when we got to the top the ferryman said you had to pay him five dollars then we went down another long ramp onto the boat then drove on to another ramp going up again and the ferryman said you had to pay him five dollars and you handed him a huge five dollar bill painted on severely creased paper with mimeograph ink and water colors the ferryman said THAT IS NOT REAL MONEY my car slid backward down the ramp out of control my foot was crushed ached sharp its own scorpion bite

*

If you or anyone you know is being abused HELP IS AVAILABLE speak with someone today

NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE

Call 800-799-7233

24/7

Waning gibbous the Sweet and Sour moon

do you know how much a tray of flaming desire weighs?

Sometimes I wake up

like a BIG wake up in my brain that makes me shake with want with need falling is constant failing Alice down the rabbit hole what is happening? I am happy in my reclusive state but sometimes I see women walking up and down my street two by two like they're happily walking in the direction of Noah's magical zoo boat 

I miss the company of women I miss women friends like a stab in my heart

I too walk back and forth down my street but early early in the morning with an animal insistence that turns my velvet body to leathery grit arms and legs clammy skin a breath off corporeal temperature shivering dog heart as I trudge and pant 

how to introduce myself to these women with their perfectly coifed hair and little walking measurement dealys connected to their arms and comfortable walking shoes 

how do I introduce myself to them? would they be horrified if I did? I have good hair but it's not currently perfect and my shoes are Converse and I wear a weird grandma cardigan and I have the crazy eyes

those women look so                     normal

should I hide in the trees then jump out and scream Hi!!! in my uncomfortable-around-pretty-much-everyone voice? should I stand by the mailbox like I'm looking for something intellectual like the New Yorker then start walking behind them a witch wriggling toward a fairy tale center? they might invite me in or they might call the police on me maybe my democrat-ness shows?

but that's not what I want to tell you dear Darklings who have read this far

I want to tell you about the tree murderer that lives straight down the hill from me whose house is behind my house if you're a deer or a bear or a crow or an owl or a goat

during the first wave of Covid that March when we were all terrified and doing stuff like washing our clothes every time we got home after being in public I was still in a narcoleptic numbness stupor my tender edges gurgling away as I sat drooling in front of the television depression and fear making a serious dent in my play time 

I listened to baseball games on the radio from the early 1960s heavy brown leather and boxy I started building terrariums to slow my own stupid down because I had no flour with which to bake I kept propagating plants wanting something to grow to be violently alive in the news of so much death

and then I saw a man trudging through the underbrush in my backyard which was very weird he knocked at my front door KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! I opened the door in my protective mask and this very much not masked man said I CUT DOWN A COUPLE OF YOUR TREES I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND

well darling readers you know I minded I minded very very much and I told that man I minded yes I minded a GREAT DEAL and I asked him how many of my trees exactly had he cut down and he said THREE which as we all know is a Jesus number a sacred number of trees so I told him it was NOT OKAY and not to cut down any of my trees down ever ever ever again because they were MY trees on MY property 

I tell you it felt like an attack that hit my head then my stomach this is not my quest! this is not how people live! he felt like an infection like a broken rib like bees in my hair like a black eye like something rotten in the middle

I took to driving down his street glaring at his house at my poor trees their poor bright orange stumps bleeding sap where they were cut and bleeding I drove by a LOT and by Jesus if he didn't cut down three more trees after that so he could build himself a driveway up into the woods on my property on my hill

goddamn it makes it hard for me to breathe to finally write it out

the next time Page was around we both walked down there and told the tree murderer to stop raping my property and that if need be I'd have my lawyer come by and speak to him (the idea of me having a lawyer is hysterical hahah but he didn't know me from squat) and he said he was going to plant more trees like that would fix the fact that I could now see his stupid compound from my deck and also all those dead trees and I still can but he didn’t cut any more of my trees down my darling darling sugar maples

but I still drive by his house occasionally to check

every time he drives by our house I say there goes the tree murderer and I give him my bullet eyeballs

                                    that should be the end of this long story but it isn't

today I asked my son to pick up my library books for me and guess who the new librarian is? it's the tree murderer's WIFE

I am conflicted friends

my heart tells me to march my fanny right down to the library and introduce myself to her because libraries have always been safe spaces for me and I've always loved librarians and maybe some time she might want to go for a walk with me maybe since she knows I'm a reader we at least have books in common                                           

and trees

and now that my soup is bubbling away and my bread is in the oven I must give you a And they all got hit by a truck kind of ending sorry I ran out of steam by the telling

And they all got hit by a truck.

The End.

Equinox, Henry, and the bad man

 

Equinox

a thin line of blood mingled with shaving cream on my leg



I wanted to carry you on a drum
but my fat lip stopped
                   everything

I took it as communion
ASCENSIONE
(it’s OK to eat the host)

&      some women you know they hate you 
&      you wonder why they don’t call
&      you wonder what you did wrong
&      you run down the hallway barefoot screaming
&      you burn a bit
a bit
                   golder

it does not get easier
it never gets easier
this is the HA HA Annie Oakley curse
pistol
rifle
shotgun
littlesureshot

*

Henry Darger is what I want to write about but this is also not what I want to write about
I want to write about Henry but I need to write about my abuser and this morning when I sat down at my computer and opened a blank Word document my heart was pounding and my hands were shaking (my hands never shake) I know I have to write about the bad man first because my guts now insist

I can’t start at the end when he chased me through the house then put a gun to my head that’s all I ever told any of my therapists or my psychiatrists when I had to explain my PTSD

*

Dear Henry,

 

I'm over and I hide in flames does it sound like your sacrificial sheep stood there I live in a hot kitchen hot pipes where four peregrine falcons circle believe me I learned the lesson of butter on a poultice I can’t fool you I have fallen where truth is sowed parked my hips invented a thief to live between my every thought I learned how to see startled like a white whippet an ink drawing of lettuce the whole wide world on stilts in Wales maybe I woke to see myself standing in the reeds maybe I was an object of the queen and drunk at night

*

I met him and started having sex with him when I was 18 and newly married to someone else he lived in the duplex next door it got messy right away it’s fuzzy now and weird I called my father and he gave me the money to take a greyhound bus to California where I settled into a religious commune high in the mountains of Humboldt County but that’s all I can write today I feel ill my danger guts spilling out all over the place

he will never not haunt me
maybe I can write him out of me

trepidation

*

Dear Henry,

 

you said you knew what it's like inside but you lied under a bank of lights men and women moved rapidly covered  me with warm sheets I chose to stay awake in spite of being betrayed perhaps a saintly height there was a knock we were under arrest Frances the kids the bookie hand-on-chest heroics I wore dark rimmed glasses showered every morning and every night you never satisfied my obsession with truth or learned to cook a lye-laced Bon Ami shot at best and drunk without books enthusiastic about my portraits and my magneto giant vulpine loping and scratching in the muddy crawl space under your precious floorboards

*

I am not brave enough to write about the frightening part under the part I have been tiptoeing around for so many years I am reading Tia Levings’ brilliant and heartbreaking memoir A Well-Trained Wife and it’s opened a hot needle of fear and bravery inside me I want to write about him but when I try I really want to lock all my doors and pull my blanket over my head all these years later and it makes me angry that he still affects me this way and I know I have to write it in order to gain my power back Levings’ book has unlocked a powerful key inside me

*
Dear Henry,

 

I am being chastised I spent a lifetime being chastised I woke up you pull my hair question how I tend my animals remind me of your fierce life your sweet addictions your chambers your lighthouse I thought I had it figured out but I don’t even have my own lungs figured out much less the architecture of the universe the meaning of the cigar smoke I smell at the oddest times or why that damned black bear swam across the sound wandered around on the beach then visited a suburban neighborhood before he ran across the freeway only to get hit by an unsuspecting driver and how that driver must have felt seeing the bear out of nowhere I swell up in my head and my eyes push out like turnips I wrote my phone number on the inside of a red matchbook but the phone doesn’t ring you are feral I am feral I keep my legs crossed at the ankle and my arms inside the ride at all times but it’s tricky it’s tricky and it seeps out into my pungent reality I can’t see around that big curve of earth and up the mud-soaked red clay road I can’t remember what I promised or why the irises refuse to bloom though they are packed tight in their green dresses packed so tight and hard they burn purple lips crisping at their edges

*

I want to name him can I name him? should I name him?
IHOPEHESDEAD

(I want to throw up now I want to take all the above and fold it and fold it and fold it until it becomes a tiny pit then I want to bury it somewhere far from my beautiful life)

*

Dear Henry,

 

I am mindless no belief in angels barely sentient immobile and singular it’s Sunday I can hear the veins of the rational world everyone in a dream is also dreaming the milk hour the gaunt hour the children’s hour I need to dream around the planetary tides here on the border everything is exposed malignant blind without direction you walk in the river measuring my attention the contrails of dreams the complicated earth instead of the one I love

 

Tomorrow is the Equinox I want to light it on fire I hope you can join me

 

Pig and farm report

 In the season of lilacs and drunk magnolias

 

at night my teeth transmit the truth of small
emperors and exploded planets a song
that was popular the year we walked
to the carnival in Coeur d’Alene and gnats
swarmed my cotton candy you boiler of cabbage
you cap sleeper you stunted slump a week later
laminaria expanded my awful circle
a briny memory tincture that ached for years
shoved me backward down the moss covered
boat ramp the dog I loved whose great tongue
smelled like a deep placid lake the old
doctor said he put a seashell inside me
it was spiky and spined but it prized the little
bomb out on the way home I wrecked your car
music is violence and tissue memory lands
my fingers in the right place or evening prim
rose do you think it’s easy now I séance my gods
I am not halved or quartered simply a seed
I carry will I ever stop standing between
doors one opens and a soprano sings the Queen
of the Night aria slams shut and another scorches
my eyes with electricity and now without prayer
or platitudes like a piano exposing its tender guts
on the street straining and moaning roiling inside

 

April 3, 2024 it’s National Poetry Month in here kids

 

There is no bell box on the door
lantern light casts down hard
near my mealy heart
I want to volunteer a standard
method of gloriously happy
geography is elastic night
reverses and doubles itself
seafoam covers my feet
then pulls back for hours
I rinsed my hair in a tide pool
shivered cloudy with rumors
of snow and the pivotal day
John Lennon was shot 
I was eight months pregnant 
a dinosaur driving back
through ash the volcano at
mount saint helens exploded 
my husband never cried he was a dry man 
but I sluiced my guts all over the radio 
the car seat and into my strawberry milkshake
I’m older now than you and it’s no good
in my head I’m not ready to open the door
I hide in the bathtub when guests
arrive cry for ten minutes in there
sucker punched I didn’t expect all the judgement
I can’t even type it now I built a fire
it was so cold I could see my breath both cats
underneath me like rhizomes my head
is a crawlspace there is only room for old
rusted women who write about gardens

and sleep by fires like dogs filling their lungs

April 2

April 1, 2024

Did the library of Alexandria hold up
her arms and rustle as you jumped
books held in your soft mouth
or Eiffel a sick light that never stopped
spinning as glass slivers opened
along her iron arms such frothy
language held you as burnt goddesses
zipped past became statues
a game you played when you were a small
wolf caricature licking mercury
from a blue plastic bowl
that endless yelp in your sugar
frosted arms

We the daughters

 

We the daughters of bountiful deities 

We the daughters of bountiful deities

dangerous girls taken to the underworld 

changed into our every her and we

so earth burst with wrong flowers

robbed of color we Persephones all hers 

our bags bus tickets and rifles 

on wordless television we every us 

girls together our apples spark

the night sky 

Pig and farm report March the Eighth: storm watch edition

The wind was high this morning so I got out of bed and quietly ran down the hall to turn on the tea kettle and the coffee pot and to heat up the oven so I could bake the dough I prepared yesterday the first time in 15 days I have wanted to bake or eat wheat or much of anything else for that matter.

The best way to count this measure is to think of it as one statement that's divided in its inflection.

1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, 6, 7, 8 then repeat quickly with grace and grief but breathe between 6 and 7 and sail through 8 spin on the edge of a copper penny hold your breath then start again 1, 2, 3, 4.

Wind gets under my skin. It feels like panic needles it ricochets up my spine like some kundalini junkie robot waiting to jump me on a dark street corner and drag me back to my home planet. Wind makes the power flick off then on then off it causes the trees to wave their crazy arms and screech outta the way! outta the way! in their keening tree voices and squirrels bombard my roof with tiny pine cones in their terror. In my wee brain the moon controls the tides which controls the wind which controls the celestial bodies which control not only my thoughts but my mood swings. Huge swathes of mood swings. Crazy Girl mood swings but Crazy Girl no longer lives here just water and big trees and bigger water and waves sloshing up the earth’s crust saying howdy!

The best way to count this measure is to think of it as one statement that's divided in its inflection.

What was Beethoven living in this moment? How many times did he divide the inflection of a measure until it was perfect? If you look at his original scores he tells exactly what he was thinking there and there and then faster there too. He wrote during storms. Like this one. He too hunkered down his ear pressed to the piano’s throat so he could hear the low pounding chords that rolled through everything he ever wrote.

I went outside a few minutes ago to throw my coffee grounds and a little water on my blueberry bushes and a bat flew in front of my face. Luckily she didn’t bring her friends. Bats have never bothered me but they startle when they swift by in their nun’s habits and nun’s stares always looking quite horrified to see me. I told her not to worry and she flitted her way back under the eaves like a black Victorian mourning hankie.

The best way to count this measure is to think of it as one statement that's divided in its inflection.

This is what I learned from playing and recording the entire cycle of Beethoven symphonies. That and don’t cry.

I’m breathing through the wind storm. Deep sucking breaths that taste like every psychiatrist I’ve ever seen in a professional setting. They always said just take a breath now which I always did deep sobby furry screamy wet breaths that felt like drowning. If you tell me to take a breath these days I might just reach out to slap your mouth. It turned out the breaths helped nobody except the psychiatrists themselves. Telling a person in trauma to just breathe is horrible and cruel.

I am roasting garlic now my oven redolent and broken things to do with my hands while waiting for the tides to recede. The good news is my shingles pain didn’t kick in until just now the longest I’ve gone without feasting on gabapentin and Tylenol first thing in the morning. I’m sitting on my bed with Jupiter snoring loudly and Hal curled in a tiny ball at my side. I feel both loved and a little bit like Meg waiting for the witches to appear and I can keep an eye on the fickle trees from here in case they decide to whip into my bedroom my snowy white bed my down comforter oh the comfort of finally having a good sturdy bed after so many years of sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes that served as a balm against the sprung box spring in that old damp sooty house.

You're out of the woods

You're out of the dark 

You're out of the night

Step into the sun 

Step into the light

Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place

On the Face of the Earth or the sky

Hold onto your breath

Hold onto your heart

Hold onto your hope

March up to the gate and bid it open 

Open!

I’m making an extraordinary clean soup with spring onions wee carrots young turnips white beans and half a zucchini sliced thin and one baby bok choy leaves and all. I added a bouquet garni of fresh thyme and dill salt and pepper some dried herbs de Provence some pepper flakes salt and pepper lemon juice and clear vegetable stock. I’m just letting it simmer on the stove because the shingles are making the right side of my back to seize up again. Bloody hell.