they take a polaroid of me

and hang it up

a woman, well-meaning, uses

a ruler to make lines, to divide

my body into parts

center line as my axis

my spine, my spindle

from there she can show me

where the hip curve is a letter off

where my waist should whittle

it was the day we had to wear leotards

mine was silver

everything felt crumpled like trash

August

Sunday Morning

I waste. The water
looks red sometimes
as if it were your hair
or a penny-scar
from when the tree
let you go. Red beads
on the grass blades:
we expected as much.
We were taught
to play, to love
the honed thing after
death. When you
touched yourself
I was alone.
The doorway held
your father while
your mother made
the stair. Once
I left in the middle
of the night; I needed
to go home. Somewhere
the land is full
of what I felt
we needed.

shangri-las

mimicry

a habitat threshed with willows
where a hawk spooled slow
and the yellow disc hovered
as if almost a half-moon
eye over winter-water
switching to where bird-caged
your fingers and your red
hair and how I'd forgotten
until the white bars emerged
composed by marsh grass
and the light was as the light
you reined around you
in the bone-blue of summer
that blue scarf and how
I noticed the bird-call slipped
against the silver coins
as I realized how very long
your hair had grown
since we left

"I hated being a teenager"

california thunder

I haven't heard thunder since we got here. january is the rainy season. it's what makes the vernal pools. today it rains and rains and i like it. my plants are green. i worry about k, who is out in the rain, and how he will get home. i worry about the cormorants. my favorite one died. he was young. it was sudden.

when i was in tenth grade i felt an earthquake. it was in south carolina. my parents were out of town. i was in their bed, half sleeping, when i heard and felt a rumble. i came downstairs and asked my sister did you hear that. no. no. later i found out that there had been an earthquake in charleston.

i am glad that i am not in tenth grade anymore.