We used to pray to god.
The slow, humbling work of
knees cramping, calves calving,
laying ourselves and all alliteration at the lord’s feet.
Sometimes we did not receive an answer.
Or we made them up with something called hope.

Tonight
I will make, eat, and put away a dish.
I’ll do three verbs to one object
while somewhere, a girl of 30
who likes food and turns of phrases just the same
looks for her place in a sentence that isn’t a footnote or the end.

poems are for Good

• and

• a

• bullet

• points

• to

• death

Was I ever a child?
Was I really made? Or, had?
I don’t remember waking up before today…

we were both smoking gals, fire in our hearts
hot to touch,
but warmth was always underneath
i bring a flame to you in my imagination

I can see the writing on the wall
it looks like your obituary
In the room, not yours, I swallow a stone
heavy enough that I might never move
Or reach

Oh it’s so scary to think
one day this will all be gone
My heart a maggot’s feast
Could it be me? That maggot?

the fear of spiders and all things crawling - her

how i sleep, legs and arms all sprawling - him

the way i peel my apples, one long and curling rope - her

God, be still my heart!
thy work of art is clear to see
by my weeping at thy creation of he,
i wonder: hast thou make me a believer of thee?

an entire country under water
a boomerang of cheers
10 dead at my alma mater…

i didn’t care much for flowers
’til you came into my life
and showed me beauty if worth having…

when i die -
you can think of me
in a painstakingly slow-growing plant…

if i die at the hands of a gun
i want every lawmaker
to have to knock on my mother’s door…

there’s an old man at the gym
who reminds me of my dad
and now my heart rate is up…

why don’t we do this forever and ever?
this is my end goal, my whole life’s endeavor
water in the soil, so later we bloom…

i’m not a kid anymore.
here’s a home that i pay for,
one whose furniture i collected…