Category: Uncategorized

a blessed year of feeding
my babe at my breast
has changed me forever
at my baby’s behest

though my milk has just stopped
like I’ve turned off a tap
I can still feel her suckle
her little pout lap

at my breast, at my chest,
at my heart, at my soul,
I offered her everything:
she swallowed me whole

suckle and suckle
drop after drop
she took what she needed
yet knew when to stop

we lived symbiosis—
her yang to my yin
our bodies two curves
of a singular skin

but she grew & she grew
and I felt the time spin
she dawdled off crawling
and I knew it within:

she was ready to give me
some time to myself
for lips had grown lazy
as she rolled off herself

away from my breast
and off in a climb
chasing adventure
her own toddler time

away from my arms
and maternal embrace
her tiny hands shoved me
away from her face

so slowly, my mammaries
decided to dry
and thusly, my tear ducts
decided to cry

I cannot believe
she is no longer there
our bodies’ bond broken
with little fanfare

she is not at my breast
though she’ll be in my heart
more than marital vows
beyond death do us part

now she stands on her own
(with a bit of support)
and she feeds herself, too
(so I’d like to report)

but the clock’s grueling glare
has now ceased in a sense
I’m no longer a slave
to the pump & the breast

the time is now ours
to do as we please
clapping and laughing
and dancing with ease

I will give her my everything
she will swallow me whole
a mother’s duality
two bodies, one sou

I. Prairie Roots

Vast sky above, blue;
sea all around, green
waves of grass under wind,
the grown man stood
thinking of decades gone
when he was young
and another man who
stood here too.
Both linked by more
than one can say:
love and genes;
one paved the way
for generations
of the other’s life.
Immigrant here
and great grandson
on the same spot
of prairie land and love.

II. Challenge to….

A tiny house stands
old, weathered, abandoned
now – only evidence of life
and hope once here,
but life, and weather,
proved too hard.
The boast that trees
would bring rain
was not true.
Thousands of trees died trying.
Farmers moved on
to find rain
and new hopes
again and again.
Only a few could prosper
and stayed, but not farming.
We left
but for other reasons.

III Invisible Connections

The grandfather stood
where his great grandfather once
claimed land
over a century before,
though not a typical prairie tract
but on the edge
of a large shallow lake,
often dry.
The man cried,
the first to return
in all that time, but
now another link
to that man who
was special buddy
in his earliest years –
leaving behind his name,
his genes, and love
for his mother tongue.

IV. Fulfillment

Five years their lives
overlapped and
were part and time
with one another –
then loss came:
separation
for a life, but
memory remained:
the man, his words
and hometown far,
far away, where family
remained, and one day
there was reunion.
Grown boy found
familie heimstadt,
Reckendorf, Bayern,
and wept with joy
in longed for union.

Translated by Huang Guosheng

The relatives probably remained in sorrow,
But the others had already sung the happy song.
What to say to the dead?
Only the corpse is left to be buried under the mountain long.

Everything is at its loveliest
as it leaves.
All that is leaving has never looked
more lovable.
It’s the leaving not the being gone
It’s the departing not the being done
That’ll ignite faint aching sparklers in
Your gutsack.
The end itself is nothing: the definition of nothing.
The end itself is historically won, behind one.
It’s the long long landing, not the deplaning,
It’s the longheld fermata, and the long deferring of
The final calamitous chord, that
Will deforest the rich soulful glade in you.
It’s the last plaintive passage in the cadenza,
Not the suave genuflecting of the maestro
And his standing squad of string players, that will
Make you hamstrung and heartwrung.
The long slow descent before wheels-down, while I
Reminisce all the nimbuses of the players in my past,
Gives me time to see them take their bows. This
Is the parenthesis in which
The wrenching takes place. It’s within the brackets here —
In the borderland between Nostalgialand and Death —
That wistfulness deals out a thousand deaths.

In the stillness, shadows loom,
A whisper from escape from gloom.
A world of pain, a silent plea,
Yet echoes of love still cling to me.

Dark thoughts drift like autumn leaves,
Yearning for peace, but the heart grieves.
In the depths, a flicker of light,
But the weight of despair holds on tight.

don’t y’all cry over Me. I was a good woman. celebrate Me. ~OG Queen
…come celebrate / with me that everyday / something has tried to kill me / and has failed. ~Lucille Clifton

it turns out the ash ain’t ash at all
but bone burned clean

all remnants of life give in
to the flame but the marrow,

the remnants blessed, are
pleasant pyre purge. 67 years

of thick skin levitating, flesh & bone
giving in while standing up to

the fire. our brilliant Matriarch
found Her loophole.

my mind is an abode about two stories tall
i often find myself roaming aimlessly
from hall to hall
i am bad at saying no
i allow everyone inside
they know where i go
now i can’t even hide
they claim they are keeping me out of danger
but why should i be scared
of some random stranger?

Somewhere between Pluto and Mars,
there’s an astronaut artist who’s lost to the stars.

His tether broke off, ecliptic to birth—
constellation he flies, gone man of the Earth.

Outlining black holes, painting them blue,
nebula sketches of planet and crew.

Forever in glide, drifting away—
astronaut orbiter, forever he’ll stay.

Somewhere between Pluto and Mars,
there’s a man who set out to reach for the stars.

Through blessing or curse, atomic disperse,
the ship that he trusted took form of a hearse.

But somewhere along the Milky Highway,
Andromeda welcomed the artist to stay.

Cosmic dust used for paint, the sky used for paper,
universally sanctioned galactic landscaper.

Somewhere between Pluto and Mars,
there is an astronaut artist who’s one of the stars.

Some nights, if you gaze, you’ll see him shine bright—
smile up at the artist and wish him goodnight.

it’s when the ash burns your fingers but you lift them to take another drag.
chewing on mint leaves.
we’re dancing to the sound of the air conditioner and all i can feel is the heat. skin to skin.
your lips curving up, a mountain i want to climb, the only one i ever would.
it’s sitting by the fire, which is a screen, which isn’t real, which is to us.
playing truth or dare as an excuse to be honest. it’s the only time i’ve been brave enough to peel
the layers back, citrus staining my fingers, lady macbeth washing her hands but being unable to
get it out.
for the first time i wonder if maybe she didn’t really want to.

outside the window
green leaves
in gradated shadows

steady the elemental spill
of cool light
pressing through
fold of dark

a slow song
from someone unnamed
on the radio

what are these images hammered
together which we call experience

the body it seems
is a fragile vehicle
made hastily and frustrated
and all the small
frightened things
seem so repetitive
and mundane

when I die
I hope
I’m remembered