Poem

The Daughter

I made mine just the same as you made yours
and mine turned out the same as yours did

I began making mine before I knew better
when what I wanted was what you wanted

In the end I threw away so many of the
obsolete arts and crafts you taught me

I start again when I am many years older
many years behind me and perhaps lost

This time I make mine in the shape of myself
calling it some new kind of womanhood

someone balancing on new feet, I stand
and start again, it is late but not too late

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Spilled Coffee

Last week I made coffee
but forgot to put the pot
under the machine, and
walked away as it brewed
across my stove burners

I’ll never be a good woman
if measuring myself the way
he did, in a world where I’d
not known my kitchen and
my hemline was too short

Not often I face the damage
of the messages in which I
wade, nor pull them from
my own thoughts; I clean the
spill as if solving a problem


(November 16, 2019)

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What I Read

A woman went to the North
to live between the mountains
away from the world, and it
was there that she wrote about
the mainstream news stories
you and I read on a regular
basis. Her premise discussed
how inconsequential it is for
trains to crash and awards to
be given and mild rain to
pass through and new hires
to be announced (some of these
were made up for effect) when
you live in the wilderness. I
suppose out there a person’s
perception changes and isn’t
so centered on being better
than they were the day prior.
Anyway, I have not viewed
news in the same light since
reading her words, and am
adding a few of my own here
so that you might make your
own decision on what I read.

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Weeks or Months

How long will it be?
We have been watching the moon
which waxes and wanes and
renews itself and brings,
usually, decent fortune

We have boarded the plane
taken seats by the window
settled in for a movie
preparation is done

I read the journal back to front,
an order that makes sense
to a brain most intent
on knowing endings

How long now?
Until life has changed enough that
the current era is only seen by
standing at the window,
looking through a glass

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