Unnamed But Named

She pushes out the skin, the flesh and the blood.

She has a dinner party smile, the smile that all the others

wish they had.

She is no belle of the house and no high-heeled, typing Athena.

She is carrying stones, one by one.

She wishes for a category or box

for her days, slipping away like

all the rest.

He, the thumbprint on heaven and earth, whispers to her:

“Beloved,” he says.

Shoes

Lord, the shoe soles are worn down from too many marches.

Shoes that hold these curves and secondary skin.

March, anyway, lady.

The best is just to wear down the leather. 

So there she goes, marching along: An elephant inside...

A Wish

Blue eyes, crystal clear flesh like her mother...

I don't know the spaces she will inhabit : stucco wooden utopias where she will host parties for 

the others. 

But I hope for an understanding of beyond primary colors.

A paintbrush poised to deny landscape and form: to dance across the sidewalk edge

to a city street full of deep brown. 

Thief

You stole her eyes. 

An abduction of a connection 

That is my soul. 

I care for the eye-less. 

A timeline of: the rush of bath water and the drizzle of excrement, a smile and a wandering foot.

I button my uniform and disappear, appear in the day and the night: watching and waiting. 

Surprise

Move in me, dear:

the different love beside my other part and below

the blessed one with thorns. 

You are an element not whole of me, but you still fill the secret spaces. 

Your skin's red shade is a mystery but also as close as 

my morning awakening. 

You have me at the green screens, waiting for the next flash of color.

Growing

Wriggling across the landscape: both frozen and with sprawling vegetation:

Her skinny digits  begin their first exploration.

I want her to try it, to delight in it. 

But this wars with the 

tiny body curled on my rib cage.

She is from me: a beautiful mess pulled

from a broken body. 

I want her to be: the bird burrowed in its nest, a wax sculpture. Instead she is the plane's exhaust in a blue sky, the charging bull.

The Truth

Flesh seeps through the floorboards of the house they paid for. 
They run the nine to five and pay with plastic for the comforts and consistency. 
But she still hears him at night, crying in his closet --- muffled sounds from the crush of the clothing around him.
He comes out of the wardrobe with a smile, but lines as deep as earthquake cracks in the ground 
tell the truth. 

Holding On

The billboard sign strips down to the metal. 

All you can see are the letters on the thin paper 

in rhythm with the wind. 

It's ending is just a 

sigh and a spurt 

in the silent night 

The screen door shuts. 

The dishwasher hums. 

You tuck your housecoat around your tight chest 

and rub your eyes.

You could have missed it, 

but you didn't. 

Unshaken

Sitting in the restaurant, Mama thinks of her first journey: the move from the darkness inside to the light of the earth:
Eyes that view the rosiness in cheeks, the patterns of the t-shirt...
Ears that hear the pitch of human banter, a clatter of a fork against a plate...
And it is all good.
As her warm body snuggles into her Mama's in the corner of a booth, Mama thinks of Jesus' hands covering the small frame.
She prays for this connection to the divine: for now and forever.
She places the child in the stroller and walks out of the restaurant door: the light gives way to the darkness that cannot be extinguished because of Mama's gray coat that smothers the dawn.

You Don't Know

Come closer to me.
Yes, me.

The woman covered in sweatshirts of odd colors ..

who can't see the sunlight between the buildings

or smell the hotdogs as the cart rolls past her feet...

Years ago, she would kiss her husband and then take his hand to dance on the kitchen floor. Later, they would eat dinner together, and she would iron her uniform in their bedroom, humming that song they danced to.

She holds no cardboard sign, but you don't need it. You know: Her hair is dirty, her belly is hollow.

But you don't know the creatures and terrors inside her: tsunamis that stir the sand, ghastly ghost hands underneath the bed, guns that fire.

Maybe sit beside her on that hard sidewalk, and give

her some dancing shoes.

Army

Underneath her coat, she is a clean  house with white furniture: 
and beside her an army of the same. Never thought I would be the other: I was the girl who worked hard.

"Equipment failure!" shouts the worker. 

Never expected this: Am I only part of what I was created to be? Or was I created this way, so I could better hear the truth intended? 

I look under my coat: It is a dirty cave.  And no amount of cleaning will make it better. 

I Never Knew

Foreign antibody: 

Love is just four letters, correct ?

I never knew this kind of devotion. 

It keeps me bleary-eyed searching Google for the answers, then teary-eyed, looking up. 

Lord, now I know: Mary's love for the boy who would save the world. 

My body, tired and done, shatters into tiny stained glass fragments: through them, though, there is light.

There is light. 

Provider

I had been fighting it all day. I'd wanted to cry from the pressure of it all. Here she was: the heavy on my chest,

a fast hole burrowed into my heart...

I am tasked with providing the sustenance for her body, but more than that, there

is the thing that keeps me awake; that I must give 

deep love 

from my human well. 

It will never be enough. 

Lord, help me.

Good morning, daughter

Good morning to you, daughter. 

Your eyelids open, and your limbs relax and tense.

I am aware of every twitch and roll, every slide of the eyes.

The sun has risen after another night of spit up and tears. 

You are a gratifying soup that I don't know all the ingredients of yet.

I hear you.

Speak, girl, speak. 

Flashes

Hanging onto plastic: pinks and yellows and blacks: the silky stream, highlighted by the store’s spotlights…

I could walk in there and make my winning purchase: something that will cover

marks spreading across my white Irish/English skin…

Sometimes just being here, observing the crawling and creaking of humanity is enough: the children who run with purpose to the spider on the sidewalk or seeing inside the farmhouse that serves as the center of the night’s starry sky.

But oh the fluorescent, how it lures you in like the two-headed lamb at the carnival.

Meanwhile, the bird’s wings close and open. The old woman’s walker wheels to the family table: last conversations happen.

But I am clicking the flashing x’s on my telephone.

And I am breathing, yes?

I am breathing.

Underneath

Under the bed, their eyes made of beads stare at the wood
and the form in the mattress.
She shifts: once, twice…
Nightgowned and small,
she emerges from the bed, looking for her father’s brown
eyes in the mirror. Gladly, she sees her mother.
She grabs a doll from underneath and looks into the reflective blanks.
She places it back under the bed and finds the space
most comfortable on the mattress.
She doesn’t want to be watched anymore
by children made out of plastic and cloth.

Humanity

Cigarette smoked: circles in the January air from her red lips, she made a wish for
the blessings
bestowed to her,
but instead she is the
black lungs.
When the meals are eaten and the tinsel crushed from the fall from the plastic bin, we stare at what is:
And your sovereign hand, dark and spiraled, twists the bronchial tree, so we breathe for more.