Poetry

For the first year, living off the heat of sagebrush, these 
were the things that kept us going: our faces as they are 
or were, hog black and shining, turned to 
bask in the slough of May crisp moonlight

Tell me, good small insignificant day
is it time 
for my selves to learn to live with one another

Bi poly pan, is how a friend in Philosophy
described me to me. I relay this as we watch late night
in bed on your laptop. (The host unwinding a joke
about loosening the lid on the stuck-fast jar 
of the spicy pickles of commitment.)

of your face onto the polished 
           floor. It’s been too long since 
                     you stammered in disbelief
                                 at the photograph of a human shadow
                     

Decades ago my dad was a short-order cook.
He says it amounted to
the commotion of one thing burning
just as you’re readying something else.

That’s not your neighbor,
           that’s the disease talking 
                     to her mailbox, pleading

                               for a letter from her dead 
                     husband or distant son

A little death—a sky 
with geese stitched on.
My fears are all explainable— 
it’s cortisol, it’s fate, 
the jerk of mercury, 
the joints’ arthritic 
prescience about rain.

Senior year he made us girls file into the gym for martial arts.

Next year, you may need to protect yourselves, he bellowed.