weird intense day out of it justwrite

Sometimes I think the smoke is a part of you, and I remember how breathing something into your lungs is really breathing it into your bloodstream. When my dad took his chainsaw to the woods to cut the limbs off of trees, he never wore a mask. I imagine the bark growing on his veins, tiny roots holding his tongue against his teeth, wonder if that's why he didn't call. Kyra tells me her parents are still in love, and I know Grama is thinking about Grandpa now, and his wife, resting by his bed in the hospital, her hand on his because she's already rearranged the lilies three times and doesn't know what else to do with it. I used to wish I could play the piano so I could watch my fingers practicing, cutting through air like my feet slice Bay water, toes curled under, my eyes closed. Lately, my dreams are full of smoke, but I breathe anyway, my throat burning, my teeth embers, my tears soft. Too many fingernails have tasted my skin. I want to cut them all and plant the opaque crescent moons in the pot with my sweet pea, dig them up sixteen months later and read the cursive their roots have made, see if I can finally learn my name. I used to think I could find it in my arteries. I would stand naked at the mirror, arms stretched up like branches bent slightly in the middle, my skin pulled so tight it was transparent and I could see straight to my organs, see my pulse everywhere at once. All I learned is that there are more shades of blue than I can count, and all of them smokey, my veins curling up through my chest, grey-blue tendrils, my lungs expanding like two matching hot air balloons tethered to the Earth, my fingernails purple at the base, almost black when I'm cold, and my heart at the center of all of it, murmuring a name over and over, syllables collapsing into themselves, and exhale that I can't understand.

wet tired justwrite

I press my fist against my sternum and know that my body is a locket full of photographs. I remember how my mother's tears could have flooded the basement again while she peeled our soggy smiles out of albums and pinned them onto strings like white sheets waiting for wind on a Saturday afternoon clothes line. I think about lines melting into each other and how streetlights fan outward at night, as if my eyes are watering like they do when I try to watch the sun move across the sky, horizon to horizon, predictable, a heartbeat beneath my palm, my pulse keeping me up at night, reminding me that nothing beneath my skin is ever still. My little brother has outgrown me twice, but I remember singing to him the song I learned in chorus until he fell asleep just before my favorite verse. I remember taking showers with him because he was afraid to be alone, washing his back with a green washcloth, drinking from the shower head while he laughed. I remember how white his hair was in the summer, thin corn silk fanning up from his cowlick like light. It's almost summer again. My skin is aching for sun and my throat is thirsty for home, creek water swallowed accidentally, iced tea and blueberries, the damp Bay breeze. I want to sweat so much I become water, evaporating into the still August air, my edges blurred, my body dropping stacks of soggy photographs onto the grass.

19 years old justwrite

Lindsey's dorm room is a time machine, and every night feels like the first we sat side by side on her bed feigning adulthood with dollar store champagne flutes, talking about ex-boyfriends and once girlfriends and someday lovers to wake up with on Sunday afternoons, brush their hair away from their sleep-weighted eyes and finally know what prayer feels like. I tell her sometimes I think she doesn't exist, like the girl who really lives in her room waits pacing in the corner while I lean on her pillow and talk to myself. I don't mind as long as I don't know. Lindsey picks weeds for me and calls them wildflowers. I hang her birthday roses upside down so they blush all winter while Kyra squeezes the stems, her fingers sticky, asking me about my skin. I say it's thicker than ever, freckles tunneling for months until they reach the surface, my sweetpea seeds still dormant in this pot under the clingwrap, the only ones who know whether or not they're alive. The sun is stronger than ever these days, but my roots are still asleep and haven't learned to stretch, are just beginning to taste with their fingertips, to discover what they already hold. The water here leaves white rings of powdery minerals on the inside of the cup I use to water my plants. Lindsey drinks from the sink now but tells me she thinks her cactus is dying with watery eyes, more salt than tears, wondering how anything blooms in the desert and how long that spiderweb was in the corner above her bed before she found it. I have her counting dust particles, tell her that spiders would rather move on than clean up, while the clock on her microwave blinks at me with three zeros, me leaning on her pillow laughing to myself, two plastic champagne flutes drying by her mirror.

Russell Justwrite 8 Stop for a

Stop for a breath on the cliffs in your dream last night, tossing bread crumbs over the edge and praying they'll find a stomach somewhere. Beneath my eyelids, there was smoke and there were sirens when they opened, the thinnest skin on my body holding in so much. You whisper in fields so I can't hear you above the wheat rustling, my hands full of bread and my ears full of wind that sounds like the ocean when I trap it in my cupped palm, bringing salty water up to my lips and feeling myself crumble into sand, dust, powder that you whisk across your cheekbones with brushes that look like clumsy ballerinas, still learning to navigate your face. I could got lost in your eyes for hours, which sounds like romance but is really drowning, my lungs filling with irises, my chest bursting when they bloom. I can still find my shadow at the back of your pupil, still as a dead squirrel on the sidewalk, mouth open like a word, stuck, and I find I don't remember how to spell. You tell me the birds hatching between my teeth are singing songs about fertility, but to me it sounds like starvation, bread crumbs snatched by the wind, salty water, wanting, gnawing at the bottom of my cliff.

Russell Justwrite 7 The sign is not

The sign is not true, and I don't have a word for this direction. I would drive six and a half hours to see you if I had six and a half hours, if I could drive, if I remembered who you are. I stare at the surface of a creek, expecting it to slow enough that I can see my reflection, but it only stops when it freezes, ice as opaque as skin. In the summer, I sprout freckles, like a thousand secret touches invisible until now. I expect them to melt like snowflakes on my tongue, sugar grains dissolving, my grandmother tossing salt over her left shoulder, the storm clouds coming in across her right. You told me once that you'd draw me a map if I needed it, but it's only showing me where I've been, my footprints fading, my footsteps an echo, my body a sunset on the last day you could see. I hope that I am warm enough to reach inside your skin, coax your secrets to the surface and tell them not to melt. When the rain comes in the summer, it falls hard, slamming itself against tin roofs and tender, closed heads of daisies, their leaves reaching up, one to cover their blank faces, one to catch the drops. I want to fall gently, a creek flowing down a hill that is almost flat, trickling, every movement a song, never quite slowing enough to reflect.

April 6 poem

Lessons

I can't forget
the way your hands press dough,
as if they know
what it wants to be,
your fingernails dusty with flour,
your palms leaving prints
that look like muscle and bone
on the countertop.

You told me once
that time is like a heartbeat,
different for everyone.
You said mine murmurs
and placed your hand
where my breasts would bloom
someday and asked
if I knew what it was saying
anyway.
I stared at the sliver of your teeth
like the moon between your lips,
your face the daytime sky,
silent.

You feed stale bread crusts
to the blackbirds. They come
like angry clouds,
bringing their own wind.
I hide
behind the kitchen window pane.
You laugh,
your face framed in feathers,
your voice a broken song,
your arms outstretched
like wings.

Birds are hollow
with bones like bone china.
They crack when they hit glass.
I found a dead robin
on the porch once,
carried it to you wrapped up
in the corner of my dress.
You buried her
with your bare hands.

April 4 found poem

Dakin F211

No loitering
not trusting her
intelligence
priority mail
with antioxidants and
seahorse
This is a
tribute

things fall apart
hugs and giggles from
Jenny
Jenny Jenny
sexy, unmentionable, taboo
unmentionable
taboo
slippery
beautiful

thanks for the
knock
are in here
with a grin
for domestic and international
heart,
blessed
My name is Jenny
Jenny
That's what you get

April 3 sestina

A Sapling Song

My father's hands are rough like bark.
I try to grow in his shadow,
pretend the roof he sculpts is glass
when really I'm a music box
that hasn't learned to be open.
If I sang I could call you home.

I used to know when I was home.
The door would close. The dog would bark.
I'd step inside, my palms open,
felling Dad's five o'clock shadow,
our only key tucked in a box,
all of our walls dusty stained glass.

He pours iced tea into a glass
and tells me he's glad I came home.
He asks me what's inside the box.
My fingers are stiff, sticky bark.
Silence surrounds my mouth, a shadow.
I pretend the lid won't open.

Time grows rust and lids won't open.
My skin is smooth, translucent glass.
Today I lost my last shadow.
I told her to go find our home
and watched her crawl beneath birch bark.
I scraped it off and built a box.

My father's hands explore the box,
curious why it's been open
since before I made it from bark.
I see him through windowless glass,
facing the direction of home.
I squint, the distance a shadow.

Beneath each eye is a shadow.
In each open palm is a box.
I tell him I will bring them home
and that my door has been open.
He worries what can slip through glass
and hide in the dark folds of bark.

His shadow grows warm and open,
his chest an old box of cool glass.
His hands were home, rough wood, pine bark.

April 2 rushed haikubricks

watching Misery
four minutes until midnight
my leg keeps yours warm

you laugh your teeth clenched
smoke rising toward tomorrow
through your cracked window

April 1 poem

Summer


Today is like summer and I
see you. I see
you in a room
full of poetry,
a lamp behind you like
a halo, your face framed
with light the color of muscle.
My heart murmurs while
yours beats

full of bleach.

I think about the poets
at the reading, how they stood
away from the microphone.
Their voices were enough
to hold us like
the cupped hands of God
hold people, open and aching,
how my hands hold
your hair or dandelions,
my fists full of
wishes,their voices
full of poetry that echoes
off the walls,
off my bones, their chins,
eyebrows,
expectations
raised like their
voices.

but their hands
are shaking.