Communion

I worship at your
altar drunk
on our communion

---
April PAD Day 24 - faith

A little death

The death begins when
you simply
walk into the room

First, you steal my breath
Then my thoughts
and all my senses

The rigormortis
of anxious
anticipation

stiffens each muscle
as you walk
in my direction

You kiss my flushed cheek
and this world
all but disappears

---
April PAD Day 18 - life or death

The dance

When he smiles at her
she blushes and looks away
before looking back


---

April PAD Day 17 - dance

Sirens

Baby let me
rest my head
in that sacred
hollow of chest

that you call
an unfortunate flaw
of fetal development,
cursing your mother

for her original
sin against you
but that I
find most sweet

where cheek on
skin is a
kiss goodnight and
muscle barely muffles

the buh-bump of
birthed betrayal beating
a siren song
that all who

are different recognize

Exercising your rights

I used to think rights were like my skeleton
god-given, sturdy, and strong
the foundation of being a human

But now I think rights are more like a muscle
pliant, moveable and changing
needing to be flexed to remain strong

---
April PAD Day 25 - exercise

Dead end

It was no secret that
he beat her
we all saw the bruises
heard the excuses
knew she wasn't as clumsy
as she purported
to be

---

April PAD Day 30 - dead end

Morning breath

The cup on

my bathroom counter

holds two toothbrushes

and the memory of 

minty breath and 

mornings spent cuddling

under that pearly 

white down comforter; 

of lips on 

the lookout for 

a surprise attack

on cheeks or

forehead or any

patch of kissable

skin, which shivered

each time you 

smiled at me. 

Take off

At the beginning
there's a rumbling

a flutter
of excitement

as we run
hand in hand

toward some
unknown destination

where we will
both soar together

or soon
crash land

---
April PAD Day 27 - take off

Diem Perdidi

Inspired by Julie Otosuka's short story, which I read for the first time today and was tremendously moved.


I was in fifth grade
when I learned what
it was to forget

that my grandmother would
sometimes misplace her keys
or lose herself completely
in the space between thoughts

She once drove a car
into the side of
their motorhome when the
space completely seized her

my grandfather screamed for
her to stop but
she wasn't present to

hear him yelling her
name at the top
of his lungs, "Whoa
Tei! Stop, Tei, stop!"

He raged at the
damage, the fear of
losing a woman he'd
loved for 40 years,

and at the space
that stole her a
little more every day

a forgetting that would
not stop or slow
but plowed into her
like she had that

Airstream and that seized
all of us when
she could no longer
remember any of our names

 ---
April PAD Day 21 - responding to another poem

Black holes

I saw this hauntingly beautiful piece at the Portland Art Museum today and was absolutely struck by it; the hair, the ears, the neck, the shoulders look just like my son ... and the anguish just moved me nearly to tears. It's like someone took a psychic x-ray or the human I love most in the world and this is what they saw. Heartbreaking.

So, of course, I wrote about it ...


sometimes
I see death
when I look
into my son's face

there's
an anguish that
could kill him
clawing just below the

surface
of his skin
a zombie eating
his brain from inside

sometimes
i see the
look of anguish
as he claws at

life
begging to be
freed from the
killer inside, the black

hole
in his throat
that's so big
it chokes out life

---
April PAD Day 6 - ekphrastic