October Poetry, Week 3

Day 15

Leaving

what it’s called when buds

form in spring? Leafing out,

what a girl is doing at puberty?

Leave me alone, 

just want to be left alone

door slams, dishes leaving 

the cupboards in a clatter. Leave 

the mess, go stand by her door. 

Just breathe there. Remember 

being left alone to sulk 

in your room? You, left 

not wanting to be treated as a child, 

warm cookies left by your bed after 

go to your room, young lady.

Don’t leave. Stay and breathe 

as if your sweet cookie breath

could leave something to warm her.

Day 16

She Dreams

She picks apples and corn

grown together on the same trees

behind the house where she lives;

She dreams so real

that nature dreams with her,

so real she rises from sleep 

to pick corn with her right hand, 

apples with her left.  Under the trees,

a fox mother and her kits eat apples 

with chickens from the yard next door.

She picks dreams like apples, like corn,

goes into the sky to harvest 

every dream every dreamt in baskets

made by her grandmothers. And at the end,

when no more dreams can be dreamed,

she will watch other dreamers 

dreaming how she picked apples

and corn, sisters growing together on trees.

Day 17

Periodic Table

I am 70%

2 molecules hydrogen, 

1 molecule oxygen, carbon-based 

organism with a splash 
of sulfur, nitrogen. 

I used to be 

periodic, heme molecules

pouring from my body, water

and wine of childbirth.

I am 100% 

woman, except 

for the traces of testosterone

intended for balance

and passion. 

I am 30% 

sure at any given moment 

that my life is perfect, 

20% that it is a mess,

50% pure chemistry.

So if even if no one else cares

even 1%  about the numbers,

I’ll spend 100% 

of the rest of my life

giving thanks for all of it.

Day 18

Fall and What’s Coming

It starts:

a sniffle, a sneeze —

into my sleeve?

Mom always said don’t 

wipe your nose on that,

but now it’s where

to deposit the phlegm

the snot, the germs

that fly when it comes

to a cold. Dad used

a steaming pot of water,

a towel draped over his head.

Mom smoothed Vapo Rub

on our chests, covered

with squares of flannel.

As a child, my husband used 

to eat it. All that menthol

cannot have been a good idea.

So what’s the plan

for all the ooze a cold brings?

It’s starting: a sniffle,

a bit of scratch in the throat,

and me with bare arms still.

Fall, and what’s coming 

has no place to go. 

Day 19

Weez

I saw the name again

game challenge, social media 

game: invite a random opponent

there it was: Weez.

You told me 

you were waiting to die, 

a tick tock of consequence

ready to go off inside.

Then I heard you’d run

away with a nomad guy

a no-good, a ruffian

who lured you west.

Did the you, Weez, die

to us for him? Did you give

all your things away

and go off, like the old ones

who walk into the woods

and wait? Did you find magic

and now you are a ghost

online, waiting for a game?

Weez, not such an ordinary name

for not an ordinary girl. 

Are you haunting me 

for not trying to make you live?

Day 20 

She was right: 

Carole King singing 

making me cra-a-a-azy, 

anticipation

of you, your coming late

to my door, softly rapping

and me opening to you

in the dark. Butterflies, bees

wait for dark too, dark

for making cocoons, honey.

Greedy anticipation

heat surging up the stairwell,

we never thought to ask

if this is right, proper. 

Instead we honey each other 

like bees, as if extinction

is the only other choice.

Years, years, and years later

we know anticipation

is not enough. Making me crazy.

Day 21

Verboten

Spitting on the sidewalk,

not scrubbing the sidewalk 

on Saturday morning, sidewalk

graffiti in München, sidewalk

a scared space where we all walk,

Volksplatz for walking.

Ist verboten.