Poem: My heart is a smooth ceramic bowl,

My heart is a smooth ceramic bowl,
With sturdy walls, wheel-tossed,
And a shiny mottled glaze;
It’s hard to be sure of the color.

A deep bowl: for cereal,
Generous ice cream scoops,
And, on occasion,
A whole box of mac & cheese.

It’s hollow, and it hurts.
It’s not broken,
And it’s not usually empty,
But now I feel an aching lack.

A bowl is still perfect
Between its many uses,
When sitting pretty in a cabinet,
Or when being cleansed.

In these moments though,
There is a painful tension;
It’s the chasm of wanting use
And waiting for purpose.

(A tidy bowl secretly longs
To be messy,
Filled to the brim
With hot immediacy.)

I’d like once again
To be thoughtfully and tenderly
Holding something,
Despite the matched grief of letting go.

Black vinyl flooring greets my boots, all specked with city dust
Containing flecks of concrete, stone, dirt, grime, and gritty rust:
But only a little bit of grit sticks upon my shoe,
And I track it through the gridded streets, off to somewhere new.
The soles of my feet carry a record of time and place
That keeps me grounded, so to speak, in this liminal space.

The Liminal

I’ve been learning German lately, and something that I found fun was writing a poem, then immediately translating it to a German version that captures the same form and feeling.

Sometimes, I feel I can do little else,
But I can give my hair to the birds.

I brush out my undyed brown strands
And waft them aloft, above.

I hope they'll be part of
Some hidden, warm nest

Of the birds I
Hear at night,

When I 
Rest.

Manchmal, ich denke nichts kann ich machen,
Aber, mein Haar ist für die Vögel.

Ich bürste meine Haare und
Hebe es in den Himmel.

Ich hoffe sie werden 
Eine kleine Nest

Für die Vögel
Ich höre 

In der
Nacht.

(In my draft, I switched to red ink when I had to look up translating help.)

I’ll definitely be doing this again. It gave me the chance to sort of re-compose and re-examine the poem, giving it more context to be understood, albeit only for those who have access to both languages.

I think more of these will be forthcoming!

“For the Birds/Für die Vögel”

As a child, I was a witch: a Poem

As a child, I was a witch, and I was powerful then;
I brewed potions out of soaps, and wished for my own garden.

I learned to tell the flowers apart, and could untie any knot;
But somewhere along the way, there’s some magic I forgot.

I sang spells at thunderstorms, made lighting crack through the clouds.
I used my voice, unthinking whether or not to be “loud.”

Known not to care, I’d never let someone take up my space,
Nor of myself, dreams, desires, allow anyone erase.

As I grow, I’ve learned to glance backward, at who I was;
She knew more than I do now, and of late, it gives me pause.

Hmm, says she: a Sonnet

Hmm, says she, I’ve been doing some thinking
About the water we have been drinking.
More common than dirt, more precious than gold,
Each and every drop a million years old.
How is it then that we are running out,
Getting scarce in every spigot and spout?
The rain still comes and the rivers still run,
But still it’s not enough… for everyone.
Some people still bathe, and steam, and shower–
Of course, they’re the ones with all the power.
Others go parched, chronic dehydration;
Ah, such “equality” in our nation.
I can’t help but feel we’ve gone all awry,
All because of an oily, greedy lie.

The Franifesto

Tag Archives: Poetry