continued: I want to
drape across
those shoulders
there's something about
strength in rest
a slump you could
set your cup on
nestled close
in the square
of your neck

you can feel that
pull,
the momentum
an arc of
someone's life
swung for a moment
into your orbit
eyes locked

and there's a certain
embarrassment
a caught me gasp
but there's no time

for we have already seen each other
caught by the chance of looking

as we move through sound
each of us a particular
specific story, a
satellite of yearning and touch

and distance and
there is a clinging --
a static realization of love, maybe --
I can only believe love
knows many forms
before we tessellate and
realign and know
someone else
again

on why benchmarks aren't quantifiable and probably we should all listen more and just let go of the idea of any sequence or supposition of what living is; a thank you


a first kiss -- tingling, impossible,
heat spreading like a winged thing 
everywhere alive -- and first rejection
and maybe your third or fourth too
dragging your self-worth up from bed
real talk in the mirror that your watery
eyes can't quite fix on, not yet, not
even when the next person comes 
along to notice how you laugh but gradually
in the soft dark hours cradled by friends
kindling a laughter to split the night with joy 
despite a growing sense that so much
will never be fair, these rich inheritances
of what was here and what was made, still
when the objects you make with your
hands begin to take on a life of their own
a delicacy and love and you feel a tug
of what is possible, an urgency of 
maternal artistry, when your mother 
suddenly and without warning, your 
onion eating sweater knitting weeping
drinking messy home of a mother
dies, and you fall, and nothing
has light and all is water and when your 
friend's baby is placed in your arms and
you can almost see this vibrating chord
humming in the air between them and later,
holding the wrists of someone who lived through
it all, who saw inventions that bombed
the world and fell in love and saw children
die before them and all you can think is how 
soft their skin is, gently wrinkling under
your vitality, and how still they seem 
to be laughing

On why every time I read the news I hear the phone ringing telling me my mother is dead; why we have to care about black men being killed even before they come back for the jews again; why every aching grief echoing behind an unnecessary loss is keening, a constant toll at the backbeat of my mind, these days:


I remember the crash
the sound of many things falling
a low thud of flesh hitting the floor
although I was across an ocean, I felt
this coming apart felt it all
rock and heave, all the boxes we had
so carefully, so fearfully
stacked crookedly up 
lining the walls in our broken home
to make them thicker maybe
we need this for sometime, keep
stashing more hidden behind doors


There's something about it all being over
that makes the reckoning easier
maybe easy is wrong, rude even to say
but inevitable
breaking down an old shed once I pried out
the bent nail holding the whole damn thing 
and watched dessicated boards buckle down
topple under the rusted roof, snap old struts
this is our inheritance


And I can't stop thinking about that feeling
the sick snap inside of things
falling apart, the center (which was never
true) cannot hold, and everything covered
in a fine dust of we're fine fine it's fine
shaken out, beaten til the particles rise up
lit in a sun beam, a dancing devilish whorl
of all the layers we've trudged through

for those break 
of day moments when


stars freckle
across soft darkness


satellites blinking furiously
traveling impossibly between lights


suddenly, a shooting star, brilliant 
and gone 


as the birds wake up, only a few at first
pulling up the blue from the sky edges 


a rhombus of gold falling 
out the window down the wall 


music and warmth cascading after
onto a dewy blanket

​I was raised with the idea of valuing abilities -- that who you were is mostly an amalgam of what you can do, and do well. Since then, my matrices of what makes good have been expanded, reordered, even: how; the manner in which; the kindness and sincerity that can be literally life saving; the shits you give, not what kind you can make; my journey from ravenclaw to hufflepuff. I could talk about this all damn day, but I won't. 


This said, at no point have I truly centered on appearance as the determining factor in self worth. This seems to be at conflict with the world around me, and I tend to do my part in sabotaging the prevalence of the conversation by simply not having it. It's a thunderdome and I don't like to shout. Howeverandbutso, I got some feels. 


Maybe it was being raised by a strong woman who lifted boats above her head, carried the ailing and elderly with compassion and with the strength of her legs, and danced her jiggling belly all across that floor. Maybe it was being myopically concerned with feudal systems and sketching beetles and memorizing the cadence of rhymes, and passing the test, and by passing I mean acing or else who even are you; maybe my mind was full of the garden and the seeds I got to plant and the trees I'd climb and look down from and the sea I swam in every day. Maybe it was, less lyrically, not having a live tv in our house. I simply was ignorant, shielded from a lot of the women laughing while eating sad salad while we, women, grew turnips in our little suburban wild, wearing sweaters we'd made that did not flatter and stacking firewood. I can't say. 


I am grateful for all this. I'm also tired of being told how weird it is. I really just can't agree? I think that uncommon is fair -- it is, tragically, uncommon for us to dress children in clothes that they like in a variety of colors and shapes and sizes, and to praise them for how they do things, and what they do. Teaching littles these past four years, I've been slam-dunked into a world of the traditionally feminine and nurturing; I've been expected to wear nice blazers (we get puked on, y'all) and told, verbatim, to "smile even when you don't mean it, you look too serious." I'm in a privileged enough position to flaunt my abilities (I can teach) and my contract (here I am, my conventional cis white femme looks got me this far, and now it's legal) and push those envelopes. I've been called mannish and direct. 


More heartrending though is the children. Mostly, I bike to work, get sweaty, wear workday clothes (soft, clean, modest) and practical, ugly clogs for standing and squatting and standing some more. Somedays, I'll come in swathed in a flowing turquoise dress, with earrings, with hair shining (I showered!), and a premonition of spring. Without fail, the army of little girls dressed head to toe in pink descends with praise: ooomg you're sooo beauuutiful. Normally compliments make me rumplestiltskin disappear in a flaring poof of discomfort, but I've learned to say, "thank you, I like this color, too" or, "yes, we are both wearing dresses!" and to accept the warmth of their excitement; I remember thinking my elementary teachers were the most amazing creatures in the world. But the varied interest troubles me; I wonder if they retain memory of their role models on the flannel soft grunge days when I am just as present, just as caring, just as capable; and what about the boys, dressed all in sharks and skulls? Who can they call beautiful in the hopes of someday becoming? 


I know that it's trite and will weaken everything I've said, but #whatever: I truly believe everyone is beautiful. Not all the time, and in all ways, but it's the portrait artist lens of seeing people for the way they turn their head, for the strength in their smile, for a broad back, for the incredible softness they carry. I can't fully internalize the thin is perfect mantra, though I obviously am well versed in its canon by exposure to this so dominant religion. I bear witness to the many different, imaginary, stupid problems we each face as our bodies preface our identity through the world; when a stranger approaches, we first see them and their form, and immediately go from there. This is obviously an issue of race, of sexism, of classism, and some extras on the side. But I think plenty has been said here before me; let the record state that I too feel it is bullshit. 


My own body has changed some, not in particularly impacting ways since puberty. I have, to my best understanding, the same body as my mother. Small and wiry, late blooming, strong thighed, quick to build. This is arbitrary. It is also arbitrary that during the last ten years, aerobic super model neon spandex fashion went on the outs and being tiny and a little weird was like, so hot; I've gotten attention from this and deserved none of it, I've been frustrated and charmed by the allowances my body elicits from others. During my childhood and adolescence, my mother became severely depressed and gained a lot of weight, fast; she was always still strong and agile, but the sadness coalesced around her like a protective layer. When she died, my 18 year old body similarly armored itself, and for a few years, I was bigger, more solid, more to move.  Change is terrifying, and loss ... is everything. Bodies aren't foolish. They know. Through a grief that could not be rushed I healed with a body that was still healthy, still young, still sexy, still strong and fast, and larger. It should also be noted that this is just my body's mechanism; other people lose weight when they're stressed and gain robust size when they're happy. Etc, etc, etc. Since then, I've gradually recentered to what I looked like before, and behaviorally, come closer to that lightness as well, with some additions (sadness, forgiveness). This makes sense; this is a natural cycle, fitted to the circumstances of my life. What I hate is that people evaluate or even praise me on it appears via my biceps. When you say, you're so fit now/thin/norm-core, I hear, I valued you less when you were bigger and if another change comes, I will accordingly deflate my opinion of your worth again. 


Which brings us back to worth, and identity, and why this has been ragging on my mind lately. What connotes does not follow. Context is story is everything. We contain multitudes, and deserve the space we take up. Whatever the fuck size that is, however it is maintained, dressed, presented. I guess I don't have a thesis statement; but just a rambling narrative, and a plea, which is to be kind. Perceive beauty in your world. Love well, and often. Give kids whatever clothes they're drawn to, toss them into the vastness of the sea (for perspective, for salt) and reinforce kindness and joy, endlessly, whenever you can, even when it's a stretch. 

a list of my mother's lovers; if we can't fix the world just try, try to make any one thing more beautiful; a revery on politics and justice


she told me, I had to wear a plaid skirt to elementary school
and got sent home the day my growth spurt dangled my knees
tantalizingly below the hem, whore girl, and I walked along the road
knee socks not quite masking the female body that was made
to torment men


when I was fourteen, she said, I fell in love with a boy 
with sandy hair and an apologetic manner, glasses, the works
we exchanged crumpled notes, sweet nothings in secret code
and eventually, made out behind the pines, off the path
winding from the cranberry bogs


at sixteen, though, there was someone else, and she grew quiet, so
childhood me dug out that old yearbook and there he is, smirking
his sexual consciousness circled in a red pen accompanied by, 
Hey Barb, it was great
getting to know you


her parents slept in separate twin beds, and indulged in sin
twice monthly, I imagine, and came down hard on her
curls were immodest, boys were the devil and soon
she had quit school and moved to boston
as a bisexual loading dock worker


she told me, my roommate was a night club dancer and I loved
watching her move and we didn't have a refrigerator but we 
fought like we cared in those snow filled streets and when 
calvin came along everything
changed


he brought her to his Alabama family, black and 
didn't the world stare, she said he taught her to cook, 
and canoe, and they wanted to have a baby, but 
he was drafted, and years later came back, 
changed


and she wanted a child 
and a home and somehow,
she said, the long and winding
found her way
to me

I know your geometries your
angularities the


division of power between
your arms and those thighs


the strength of sloping shoulders
and too well that fulcrum


the about which 
we turn, negative space


where everything
hangs in the balance

today is draped in a gray shawl of mist
and I find myself comforted
in the familiar, the clinging sadness
of novembers


calling of calamity and anguish,
of loss as cleaving as --
and then I wonder why yesterday,
the marker, the dreaded anniversary


felt almost fine. It was bright, and relatively warm
a few clusters of brilliance in yellow and red
burst forth on the trembling of naked dark trees
and I felt the division, the heaviness of then


and the starkness of now, the air and
light of a life after, a life in motion and filled
again, filled to brimming with small joys
and petty frustration, with fear for 


all the global anger and hate that feeds into more
of the same, the home cadence of loving routine
softening the wear and tear of fatigue
and I wonder, if she had died in the spring


instead, if the trepidacious green shoving up
through thawing ground would sing to me
of lament and memory, or if the dog days
of sultry heat brought a molten melancholy


if the darkest hour had fallen in the deep snow,
with the faith that it will only get brighter
or if, maybe, things had been different
and she hadn't

​Warrior cry of the fine; a love note to my friends who want more; a tall glass of cold water on a hot day or, when that fails, a short mug of warmish water in late October


This is to decry the idea 
that some of us are damaged


broken, used goods
baggage, heavy, cracked


And those others
those light carefree ones


Those the mythical and 
self denying


Those are fine, fine, I'm
Fine, I need 


For nothing


That you have issues
problems, sure, 


irrevocable complexities and
a certain way of wincing left


But we've all had parents
You know what I mean?


Who loved you so painfully much
or were never there


Past stories that layer holograms 
over lovers and friends and new cities


But you're fine, fine, and somewhere
may we find the grace of a land


where you can be as 
fucked as you are


and find compassion, 
growth, love.