writers are liars

I'm pretty tired of writing poetry, I've decided. It's ironically tiresome to pretend to be emotionally burdened in ways that I am actually not. I'm not a writer and this poetry class is exhausting.

My boyfriend took me to the museum not too long ago and they had this exhibit of wood sculptures that made me jealous that I do not work with my hands. I'm not sure how people make wood look MORE like wood or make it not look like wood or even manage to make a bowl seem artistic when it's just a simple bowl, yet it's not. I've never been able to do this and it frustrates me sometimes.

The weather is getting warmer and that means disc golf and telescopes and cookouts and kite flying and nights on the patio with him and hookahs and First Friday Art Trail and playing sports I am inevitably bad at. These things make me excited and I can feel the seasons changing. It makes me antsy - like the eve before a really big trip with friends.

I'm going to redo my site. I've just decided this as I've been typing this entry.

I am optimistic and artistically impulsive and happy. These are all good things.

detritus cycle

Standing in her debris,
I remember when I left home for good.
I was seventeen
slender, lithely moving
through the maze of boxes and bags,
piled high and obstinately saved
"to keep memories in"
my mother said, in response
to the adult caseworker's inquiry
as I slipped out the door and far away
from my mother's compulsive needs.

Ten years later, she left a history in rust
patterns and stains along the wall -
waterlogged clothes and rodent droppings.
I count them slowly,
noting the arc and the bend
of organic decay has an artistic degree.
Nothing has changed, including the small
portrait of our nuclear family
hanging hidden behind stacks of rubbish
and suspiciously clean.

So unlike me,
she could never let anything go.

1983

Twenty-six years later
I’m still a reminder
of aeroplanes and one long summer night.

My mom used to tell me stories of her youth
like her aging was my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I’d say
in the conjuncture
of conversational silence and the background sound
of the blaring television and automobiles
that I was not on or in,
(I wished I was)
while she feigned
careful apathy at the day’s news.

I still can’t get the story
about back-alley abortionists
practicing their trade
on the desperate and destitute
out of my head.