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sssssslay me

expose the wonder. peel my layers back

with persistence and your forked, silver tongue

‘til light unzips my folds and I lose track

and all control; ‘til hoofbeats pound, unstrung

notes sound, in the bowl of my core, the bell

of my temple vibrating, keenly and round.

peel me with your teeth, pomegranate knelled

and bursting, unleashing all the profound,

forbidden mysteries of paradise

throb after throb unspooling like ticker tape,

grazed nerves flushed with brimstone and god light,

making my body, consciousness, soul ache

for more dances with death, more cessation

of breath, more kingdom-come-hellfire-salvation.

March 23, 2024 0

Paper Doll

She walks

in beauty like a

Joan Crawford/geisha

girl, like a paper doll, silken

kimono cinched tight at the

waist, soft sleeves ballooning

beneath shoulder pads, fabric

flaked with the fragments

of your love, with the

fragments

of your

whims and shifting moods.

Blue like the jet stream from

that trip in September to Paris,

the one where she spilled coffee

(your coffee) at that café and it got

on your newspaper, and it got on

your nerves. She wears that

memory, you know,

deep inside.

She wears it

like the azaleas

blooming at those houses

you toured in Savannah last spring,

their pearlized pinkness nearly matching

the sunset and her lips, before the blood and bruising.

Before something, a misstep — a missed step on the historic

steps — broke a heel on the Prada pumps you bought her just

three weeks before, so you broke something too. Some

thing you regret, of course. Something that turned

all those little pink houses ghostly gray, the

pinch of your fist erasing her smile, the

soft light in her eyes. The wind will

rise, she’s learned, and she can

only try to curl inward for

shelter, to erase her

self even more.

Her center

is cinched

tight, but

her fold-

over

tabs

flap loose as,

broken-cheeked, with blackened-brow,

she walks in beauty, diminished by night.

March 2, 2024 0

How Can We Fix This?

A child was lost.

A child lost.

The world beat him

Battered him, bruised him to breaking,

And – go figure —

He broke.

His spokes gave out.

His wheels flew off.

His handlebars torqued.

And he tumbled.

He’d been tumbling awhile.

But this time,

He tumbled so far

He could not,

Would not –

Refused –

To get back up.

On the front end of a warm Tuesday

At the ass end of a cold month,

Sick to death with hurt,

He took charge.

With a discharge that fixed

And dilated

His pain

In a huge, gaping hole.

That opened to a ravine

That swallowed a family

And shook a school

And rattled a community.

His mother unhinged

His father undone

His siblings unstrung

His promise unsung

His lyrical, beautiful,

Guitar-humming

Soul-strumming

Sweet promise,

That could make this place beautiful

– so, so beautiful –

Left unsung.

How can we fix this?

Not this, that’s impossible —

Fixed forever in a curled dark hole

Deep in his family’s ribs

Howling unchecked —

But this?

This brokenness

This curled dark hole

Deep in society’s rib

Howling unchecked

… and ignored.

How?

February 28, 2024 0

Pivot like Rilke, Pause like Oliver

You must change your life, Rilke said.

There is no place that does not see you.

So, burst like a star from all the borders

of yourself.

And to do that, you must:

Pause

and attend to

the riotous performances

of those that

recognize life

and its beauty in the

here and now,

in the being,

said Oliver.

And to do that, you must:

Be alive in the fresh morning.

Be the dark center where procreation flares.

So, pivot like Rilke. Pause like Oliver.

Be permissive.

Like a poet.

Like roses,

fully blown,

drinking the air of the silver morning

with their petal-soft mouths,

tasting and celebrating all that there is,

in moment after moment of perfumed possibility.

Pay attention.

Do that.

January 27, 2024 0

The Butterfly Effect

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has and these are of them. Whither have they vanished? ~~ William Shakespeare

When I read this week about six people from Missouri, four adults and two children –

read about the metaphysical-and-quantum-physics-spouting cult leader spinning chaos

from a prison cell, proclaiming his targeted victims “carbonated beings,” I couldn’t help

but think of Banquo’s quote from Macbeth. Because those six people, like ginger ale fizz

and the three weird sisters, all vanished into thin air.

Kind of like me at sixteen – a victim of a cult, but a victim in reverse. My father, a chaos

physicist, teaching the science of surprise, the science of the nonlinear and unpredictable,

while mourning the loss of a father, found evangelical fundamentalism, fusing love of

subatomic principles with an unbending rendering of scripture thanks to a ramrod patriarchal penis-head

stirring butterfly wings with bible verses, and unspooling

a teenaged typhoon in Tennessee. All because I refused to walk as a sheep. Me, who used to

trail after my father like the dust trail on a comet, shimmering in his presence, preening as he

presented to my fifth-grade class all the mysteries of our brave overhanging firmament, fretted with

golden fire and planetary motion, his faith never faltering, even as his faith failed me. I learned the

science of surprise, how lines of scripture can become prison bars

destroying free will and families alike. The mother of one of the missing mothers in Missouri, when

interviewed, says she’s “holding on by her faith” to the hope that her daughter and grandchild will be

found. Ironically, that’s exactly how her daughter vanished – by holding on by her faith. As did my

father’s daughter — his faith a soothing balm for the ache of a father’s loss in his heart, which then created the ache of a father’s loss in my own.

The flutter of faith’s metaphysical wing – so fair and foul a thing I have not seen.

January 20, 2024 0

Cold January Light

Lavender air sifts

through pine trees

cold as the silverware

left on the back porch

overnight. Winter is

here, the season has

changed, and the light

has changed, and the

temperature too.

Layers of chill like river

sediment, like somebody’s

nose against your nose,

like a traitor’s kiss, lips

dry, cheeks chafed,

earlobes berried

as the lavender air,

clanging with goose calls

and church bells, hollow

and cold as the spoon

on the back deck, as the

hoarfrost on the handrails,

as the saplings and sentinel

trees, backlit, starkly naked

completely exposed above

the sleeping groundhog —

oblivious in his burrow,

of the season changing,

of you changing —

knowing only that

now is the time to curl

up before being reborn.

January 19, 2024 0

A Thousand Twinkling Sparks

I’ve always loved starlight.

The dusty sprinkle of the Milky Way,

the brittle glitter of constellations,

the renaissance glow of old and new,

of reds and golds and faintest blues.

And the flames of candles, too.

The shimmering flicker of a haloed wick,

the undulating liquid light that peaks

and flattens, fizzes and flares,

always moving, yet still so still.

So, of course I love Christmas —

the dotted-light stitch of houses

and trees. The starry-night feel

of them, as if we’d dredged the

heavens with a honey wand and

pulled its sweetness down to our

hearths and homes, our hearts and

bones kindled with a thousand twinkling

kindnesses, a thousand twinkling well

wishes, a thousand sparks of love

of comfort.

of joy.

December 21, 2023 0

The Fragility of Things

So many things in life are fragile:

nerves, eggshells, that set of Lladro figures needlepointing on

your great aunt’s mantlepiece. And family. Family, especially. I never realized

how much until mine began breaking. Tiny fault lines appearing on the faces of my parents,

aunts, uncles, myself. Small fissures at the hinges of mouths, the chalked, blue circumference

‘round eyes. From there – like Ozymandias – it all crumbles. Two thus far, have tumbled to the ground, with more to follow. Cracks in the foundation of the family tree, ever-widening, threatening the

center of the two grand titans of my youth I visited this week. They struggle against the fell.

One, gnarled roots lichened with dry rot, incapable of withstanding the gentlest breeze,

leans on the trunk of the other, stoic and strong, but tired. Oh-so tired. The detritus

of decline feathers their nest, clutter collecting on surfaces

like whiskers on unshaved faces, the efforts required to

clean, to clear, too much. Kleenex, coffee, yogurt

cups, cardboard

and pill boxes,

a cacophony of

alarms sounding

and resounding,

hour after hour,

chiming birdcall

begging a berry be

dropped

in a gullet,

infinitesimal

directional

notches

scored,

minutes

sliced, drop by

drop wedged

between

here and gone.

Soon and not long –

a blood-dimmed axe will fall, or tide will rise and uproot more fragile things in life, like nerves, eggshell, porcelain, and titans, strong and ancient and mortal as family

especially family.

December 9, 2023 0

Mamaw facetimed me yesterday afternoon, via my youngest daughter. Her voice twanged hard through the screen. But then, it’s always twanged hard. On a plane once, someone asked if she hailed from Australia. But it’s Appalachia that’s made her, stamped her with the crags that line her face, the hair that curls like the eponymous gray smoke off her mountains.

She loves those mountains and everything that flows and grows from them:

She loves a good muddy creek and the fish that swim there. Give her a worm and a hook and she’ll perch on the bank for hours, casting and rocking and listening to birds.

Oh, how she loves birds. All around her house, feeders saddle porch rails, hang from soffits, suction to windows so she can watch finches sling birdseed like laughter, hummingbirds spin air to blurred magic.

She loves a vegetable patch full of pole beans and cabbage and maters. She cooks fresh in the summer, then her own canned all year round. You’ll always find a pot of pintos on the stovetop and a hodgepodge of sides on the table. Drop in any time of day and she’s ready to feed you – or sit you down for a game of spoons. She loves a good game of cards.

But she especially loves BINGO. One of the first times I met her was in a Moose Lodge with a bingo cage rattling and a slew of daubers at the ready. She slid a card and dauber my way and told me to play.

But even more than BINGO, she loves babies. Hand her a newborn and the lines in her face vanish, the twang in her voice softens, and she’ll coo, “Good… Good… Good…” for hours on end — the only person I’ve ever heard do this. I’m convinced that’s why my girls have both turned out so very good, good, good.

And most of all, she loves family. And whomever she loves becomes family for life. I ought to know.

Because even though we aren’t technically, legally family anymore. she called me yesterday from her hospital bed to tell me she loves me, the rest of her family gathered tight like quilt squares bunched warm round her heart. Because last night, she gave us all a good scare.

Last night, she went to see Jesus. She told me so this morning when she called me yet again — to tell me she loves me and to tell me she saw Jesus, and her mama and daddy too. Her daddy was running, and her mama was singing, and she wanted so badly to stay. But Jesus told her to go back home, to go tell it on the mountain. And so she did. And so she is.

Mamaw was my mother-in-law for almost twenty years. But she’s my family forever. Our lives are stitched together not just through my girls, her granddaughters, but through that boundless, timeless love of hers. Sweet as birdsong. Binding as pintos. Eternal as Jesus.

November 19, 2023 0

postmodernfamilyblog

Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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