Category: Poetry

the garden of my soul is filled with land mines my mother dug each hole with care and laid the shell down my father covered them with dirt making sure that each was armed i do not have the map to my mine-filled garden i do not know how many mines are left to explode…

i swam out beyond the buoys and kept swimming i closed my eyes so i would not see the shore slipping away from view and though my arms burned and though i knew you were long out of reach i kept swimming i had stood on the shore for far too long i had rested…

breathe and don’t stop breathing push and don’t stop pushing fight and don’t stop fighting each time they win, they grow stronger they build new strategies they find more weaknesses in your defenses if you quit, they win again and they cannot win again so breathe and don’t stop breathing — Clio 04.05.21

on an easter when i still believed on the western bank of the saint clair river in a park where my father and i were setting out folding chairs just before the sunrise he in his minister’s gown was surprised that i was up so early on a sunday since i didn’t like church but…

“freak” is a brick thrown through a window i can see it coming: chest expanded, eyes red, primate teeth bared it has been pulled from the foundation of the house i would not live in it was crafted from the stones of the land i have disavowed ground up and box shaped and the color…

i held my tongue one too many times and now it’s run away i freed it for just a moment but it saw an opportunity and took it the last time i saw it it was in the yard digging underneath the fence by the back wall i couldn’t call out to it so i…

i wanted to show you what my face looked like behind the mask but i was afraid that you would turn me away just like the ones i knew when i was a child like the girls who laughed at my shows of femininity at my tears at the dolls that rocked me to sleep…

the name you gave me is a tattoo on my soul. and i know you went to the studio, thumbed through the book, debated and discussed, argued amongst yourselves: torn between the unicorn with the rose and the steampunk mermaid. i know this tattoo on my soul honors a beloved aunt that died before i…

was it you who dreamed of me this time? we were trapped in a symbiotic haze our semiotic ways stretched out like fingertips to fill the gap between us was it you, indeed? because i remember the details of our shared moments so clearly: i want to own these moments, to coddle them, to watch…

behind the rage there is beauty the fires that burn bright hide the quiet of the afterdawn that settles into the crevices between the then and the to be and in that quiet, a gentle voice wonders: was it always this hard to sleep? were the dreams always this complex? whatever happened to the innocence…