From August, 2010
I dream often of the ocean, of waves I can never see beneath.
The other night I dreamt of you.
I told you "It's over," and you held on to me.
I might, deep down, be holding on to you too.
And you saw that! I know that you saw
behind my stone wall of calm words and logic.
Logic that says we have to let go.
I know you saw me,
saw me,
because your face shifted.
Your eyes kindly placed each stone on the ground,
coaxed my lips into yours,
and reminded me that I can never build a wall you cannot see behind.
Then we walked in different directions into the night.
All this has led me to a wooden porch with dried garlic hanging by the windows.
Inside, a bed is made for me,
and a grandmother waits with so much love in her eyes
the whole world must feel it.
The shelves are lined with poems.
There are blueberry fields out back.
I am thinking of you, and how you hate poems.
You are thinking of me.
Maybe we are even looking into each other's faces again.
Maybe we are sitting on that stone wall again and cars are driving by.
Maybe we are out at sea, treading water, unable to hold on to each other.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Nine Peaches
Walking through the door
of Kathlyn’s family cabin,
we flick on the lights.
Nine round peaches
sit atop the counter before us.
A bag of croissants, too,
brought back from Paris this week
by Kathlyn’s mother.
The whole world is represented
in tapestries, baskets,
ceramics, paintings
all carefully placed.
But the peaches are from here,
Georgia,
where Kathlyn comes back to rest.
She lives in Nairobi now.
She has been seeing turtles lately
She has been seeing turtles lately
and wonders if they are a sign.
She’s seen them born,
climbing out of their shells
moving towards the ocean
across a beach they will return to
when they have their own babies.
Their bodies know.
She’s met one almost 200 years old.
A female, Mary,
who swam across the Indian Ocean
to show up on the island of Lamu
where she’s witnessed colonialism
and the 21stcentury.
Her body knows.
Mary once moved across a beach
just born
trying to make it to the ocean
when many of the others around her
wouldn’t.
And here she is.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Mini Memoir revisited
My three siblings and I, all born a year apart, put our pillows in the freezer on summer nights.
Free from school, we would stay up past our bedtime
jumping on the king size trampoline bed in my parent's room.
There was a window unit that blew cold ac into the room
until it became an oasis within the hot house.
After a bath, my mother would weave my wet hair into a french braid down my back.
I wore my dad's billowy t-shirts to bed,
but some nights after the beach, just my swimsuit,
dragging sand into my sheets with me.
I spent much of the summertime playing at Upham Beach
until the sky bled fuchsia onto a flat Gulf of Mexico.
I think I have loved Upham Beach since before I was born
on the twenty seventh day in June, 1989.
No matter how far I wander,
that warm water is closer to me than my skin.
Free from school, we would stay up past our bedtime
jumping on the king size trampoline bed in my parent's room.
There was a window unit that blew cold ac into the room
until it became an oasis within the hot house.
After a bath, my mother would weave my wet hair into a french braid down my back.
I wore my dad's billowy t-shirts to bed,
but some nights after the beach, just my swimsuit,
dragging sand into my sheets with me.
I spent much of the summertime playing at Upham Beach
until the sky bled fuchsia onto a flat Gulf of Mexico.
I think I have loved Upham Beach since before I was born
on the twenty seventh day in June, 1989.
No matter how far I wander,
that warm water is closer to me than my skin.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Cathedral
She is slight, my sister,
with a dancer’s waist and shoulders.
Her back is a moon beneath her sweater.
She and her friends embrace strong and quick,
then line up at the bar for class.
An observation window sits above the white dance room, their sanctuary.
The teacher speaks in one-two-three’s infused with French
and the pianist is invisible.
“As well as you can today,” she says.
“minute by minute.”
My sister commands the vessel of her body
with raw, red heels and a mind like a knife.
Spectators group at the window
floating above the studio, above the streets of Boston.
I think of tourists visiting mosques and cathedrals,
hoping to take away a portion of beauty for themselves.
There is beauty to every person.
Some, however,
are a light in the dark. They need no adornment.
The color and structure of their hair, teeth, skin
are all their own and are perfect. They are
temple and art and music
and they give
so you do not have to take.
with a dancer’s waist and shoulders.
Her back is a moon beneath her sweater.
She and her friends embrace strong and quick,
then line up at the bar for class.
An observation window sits above the white dance room, their sanctuary.
The teacher speaks in one-two-three’s infused with French
and the pianist is invisible.
“As well as you can today,” she says.
“minute by minute.”
My sister commands the vessel of her body
with raw, red heels and a mind like a knife.
Spectators group at the window
floating above the studio, above the streets of Boston.
I think of tourists visiting mosques and cathedrals,
hoping to take away a portion of beauty for themselves.
There is beauty to every person.
Some, however,
are a light in the dark. They need no adornment.
The color and structure of their hair, teeth, skin
are all their own and are perfect. They are
temple and art and music
and they give
so you do not have to take.
Mini-memoir
When I was seven lightning struck the brick road in front of my house. Yellow caution tape surrounded the hole and my mom told me not to go near. When I did, the bricks gave way under my feet. My arms caught the ground, suspending my body above the dark sewer system. Stunned, I pulled myself out and slipped into our house through the side door. I jumped, fully clothed, into the shower in my dad's half bathroom to clean the mud off my body before anyone saw.My dad's father had our house built when it was time for him to raise a family. He worked for Florida Power, and I've been told my block is the last to keep electricity in the event of a natural disaster. My grandma told me that no one really lived in St. Petersburg until air conditioning was invented. This made me feel like I had a heat resilience super power since my family's house didn't have central heat and air until I was ten. On summer nights my three siblings and I, all born a year apart, would put our pillows in the freezer. We stayed up wearing billowy shirts, jumping around on the trampoline bed in my parents' room, which became an oasis when when they turned on the a.c. unit in their window. That cold, along with the braid my mother would pleat down my hair after a bath, are some of the most poignant sensations of my childhood. I felt a certain ownership of summer because I was born in June. My family didn't have a pool, but we made use of those owned by friends or waterfront hotels. At night I would fall asleep in my bed still wearing my bathing suit so I could wake up and go right back to a pool or Upham beach. Two places I have been since my first week of life are church and Upham beach. The warm gulf water was as close to me as my skin and when I moved to Baltimore for college I looked for a place to swim for months. I didn't find one, but the ocean never left my sleep; it is the only reoccurring dream my subconscious has held on to.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Self Portrait
I am
the golden month of June,
a girl called Blue,
stars burning in my belly,
two stepping to
a rap-tap staccato
of dog toenails
on sidewalk,
bags always packed
drifting between
home and where
I think I should be.
Scurrying,
image capturing,
painting and hoping
my muse will descend,
my life blood, my dopamine,
the mysterious elliptical fish
emerging.
the golden month of June,
a girl called Blue,
stars burning in my belly,
two stepping to
a rap-tap staccato
of dog toenails
on sidewalk,
bags always packed
drifting between
home and where
I think I should be.
Scurrying,
image capturing,
painting and hoping
my muse will descend,
my life blood, my dopamine,
the mysterious elliptical fish
emerging.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Poems of Establishing Identity and Transitioning into Adulthood (Written January - April 2009)
Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," verse 22:
"sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
sea of breathing broad and convulsive breaths
...I am integral with you, I too am one phase
and of all phases."
_____________
I've made my home on the ocean floor.
I stitched up seaweed with my own nimble fingertips.
I pushed cupped hands against clay
until walls rose.
They softly pushed back
and instead formed me.
_____________
I had a dream I lived on an island.
Water pried open my eyes.
_____________
God is my neighbor.
He and I rocking chair-talk
on the back porch.
Boards squeak.
Breezes and mosquitos
come in
the tide
goes out.
_____________
My favorite part of the day is washing my brushes and
sprawling my throbbing body
across the mattress.
I thank God.
Singing flows through the pipes overhead.
My oil paintings come alive,
little gummy people, all of them me.
I recall the girl in my poetry class
with the crooked mouth
and how beautifully she speaks.
______________
Snow Day
When I prayed for the world to stop
just for one day
so
I could exhale,
I didn't think
it actually would.
___________
soft
one thing at a
time little one
_____________
Nobody likes the
concept of
surrender-
until they learn
that it means
rest. And
even then
it's hard to
grasp.
Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
_____________
Each Friday
I harvest
A fresh crop
of paintings,
plucking them
from my studio wall.
_____________
I see an association between
living in nature and music
versus
living in the city and art.
One is truth, on is one step removed from the truth -
a reproduction of the thing, and not the thing itself.
When you play a note,
it only claims to be
that note - a song on that instrument, in that live time.
Apainting points to somewhere, something else.
It references. It is rarely self-referential in the way that music is.
Music can point elsewhere, of course,
but the sound it makes, in the air, in real time,
is nothing but itself.
Just like a primary color, like pure pigment. Like a tree.
It is the original, it cannot be reproduced or it will be less.
The city only references nature, God made structures...
a painting refrences a tree,
but it will never be the tree
the way that wood and bark and leaves are a tree, or
the vibrations of a C minor through the air are
a C minor.
______________
Seeing is much more abstract than looking.
Looking begins and ends with the tangible, the visual,
but seeing goes beyond to include
an understanding of the unseen, the intangible.
A portrait could be just
paint arranged on a canvas to look like a face,
or it could feel alive with the sitter's unseen qualities.
______________
Art has taught me secrets
that I want to whisper to you
wide eyed and huddled
under a glowing blanket.
You won't believe it, but,
everything tht's inside of you-
it's in me too.
______________
No one would say that all art is alike,
but I would defend that all art
from one creator
has essential sameness.
Yeats' poems,
Beethoven's symphonies,
Speilburg's films,
Valentino's dresses.
Mac's computers,
Michelangelo's figures,
Chicago's pizzas,
Ailey's choreography,
Bruce Mau's designs,
even my siblings and I-
What is essential in each of these bodies of work
is the same,
because they share a maker.
That is how I know you.
I just look at what is essential, inherent
to me
and it is similar in you
because we share a Maker.
______________
When I know myself
I know you
(and when you know yourself
you know me.)
How did I come to know
what I really am?
How do I know
what a piece of art truly is?
I ask the artist, the maker, the Creator.
______________
I know you worry about what comes next,
I do too.
I know you dream about
going back to December 5th or February 20th,
yeah,
I miss him too.
I know you have a hard time believing
that you are beautiful,
I do too.
______________
Sometimes you have to hear things
spoken
to believe them.
So I say to him
"You are beautiful."
______________
I have a God that loves me
and a boy that holds me.
My bed hugs me,
the three console me,
whispering, "beauty, beauty."
______________
I choose you
every morning I wake up
with sleep heavy on my eyelashes.
______________
Medieval woodcuts
describe gluttony
with a cup
and lust
with a kiss.
What is the serving size
for kisses?
______________
The same thing happens to
my body
when I think about you
that happens to my tongue
when I think about citrus.
______________
I want to get a hold of you
I want
to
get
a
hold
of
you
I want to
grab hold
of you
I
want
you.
______________
I am interested in language,
but only know English.
I am passionate about travel,
but I haven't been far...
______________
Being a good student
just means
that you go home
and do your homework
at night.
______________
Is knowledge something you drop into
when gravity kicks in
and takes away the slack
and you bounce heavy in your harness
at the end of a rope?
______________
In Baltimore, 60% is passing.
The standards are so low.
Young child of Baltimore
City Schools,
you chant "I rise,"
one classroom over,
but how?
______________
I am sorry professor
I couldn't finish the readings you assigned.
I had to play my ukulele
the way you have to go to
the funeral of a family member
or the dentist
or your best friend's wedding
and then I had to
write about it.
______________
I sharpen pencils.
I write poems.
I want to
say
something.
"sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
sea of breathing broad and convulsive breaths
...I am integral with you, I too am one phase
and of all phases."
_____________
I've made my home on the ocean floor.
I stitched up seaweed with my own nimble fingertips.
I pushed cupped hands against clay
until walls rose.
They softly pushed back
and instead formed me.
_____________
I had a dream I lived on an island.
Water pried open my eyes.
_____________
God is my neighbor.
He and I rocking chair-talk
on the back porch.
Boards squeak.
Breezes and mosquitos
come in
the tide
goes out.
_____________
My favorite part of the day is washing my brushes and
sprawling my throbbing body
across the mattress.
I thank God.
Singing flows through the pipes overhead.
My oil paintings come alive,
little gummy people, all of them me.
I recall the girl in my poetry class
with the crooked mouth
and how beautifully she speaks.
______________
Snow Day
When I prayed for the world to stop
just for one day
so
I could exhale,
I didn't think
it actually would.
___________
soft
one thing at a
time little one
_____________
Nobody likes the
concept of
surrender-
until they learn
that it means
rest. And
even then
it's hard to
grasp.
Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
_____________
Each Friday
I harvest
A fresh crop
of paintings,
plucking them
from my studio wall.
_____________
I see an association between
living in nature and music
versus
living in the city and art.
One is truth, on is one step removed from the truth -
a reproduction of the thing, and not the thing itself.
When you play a note,
it only claims to be
that note - a song on that instrument, in that live time.
Apainting points to somewhere, something else.
It references. It is rarely self-referential in the way that music is.
Music can point elsewhere, of course,
but the sound it makes, in the air, in real time,
is nothing but itself.
Just like a primary color, like pure pigment. Like a tree.
It is the original, it cannot be reproduced or it will be less.
The city only references nature, God made structures...
a painting refrences a tree,
but it will never be the tree
the way that wood and bark and leaves are a tree, or
the vibrations of a C minor through the air are
a C minor.
______________
Seeing is much more abstract than looking.
Looking begins and ends with the tangible, the visual,
but seeing goes beyond to include
an understanding of the unseen, the intangible.
A portrait could be just
paint arranged on a canvas to look like a face,
or it could feel alive with the sitter's unseen qualities.
______________
Art has taught me secrets
that I want to whisper to you
wide eyed and huddled
under a glowing blanket.
You won't believe it, but,
everything tht's inside of you-
it's in me too.
______________
No one would say that all art is alike,
but I would defend that all art
from one creator
has essential sameness.
Yeats' poems,
Beethoven's symphonies,
Speilburg's films,
Valentino's dresses.
Mac's computers,
Michelangelo's figures,
Chicago's pizzas,
Ailey's choreography,
Bruce Mau's designs,
even my siblings and I-
What is essential in each of these bodies of work
is the same,
because they share a maker.
That is how I know you.
I just look at what is essential, inherent
to me
and it is similar in you
because we share a Maker.
______________
When I know myself
I know you
(and when you know yourself
you know me.)
How did I come to know
what I really am?
How do I know
what a piece of art truly is?
I ask the artist, the maker, the Creator.
______________
I know you worry about what comes next,
I do too.
I know you dream about
going back to December 5th or February 20th,
yeah,
I miss him too.
I know you have a hard time believing
that you are beautiful,
I do too.
______________
Sometimes you have to hear things
spoken
to believe them.
So I say to him
"You are beautiful."
______________
I have a God that loves me
and a boy that holds me.
My bed hugs me,
the three console me,
whispering, "beauty, beauty."
______________
I choose you
every morning I wake up
with sleep heavy on my eyelashes.
______________
Medieval woodcuts
describe gluttony
with a cup
and lust
with a kiss.
What is the serving size
for kisses?
______________
The same thing happens to
my body
when I think about you
that happens to my tongue
when I think about citrus.
______________
I want to get a hold of you
I want
to
get
a
hold
of
you
I want to
grab hold
of you
I
want
you.
______________
I am interested in language,
but only know English.
I am passionate about travel,
but I haven't been far...
______________
Being a good student
just means
that you go home
and do your homework
at night.
______________
Is knowledge something you drop into
when gravity kicks in
and takes away the slack
and you bounce heavy in your harness
at the end of a rope?
______________
In Baltimore, 60% is passing.
The standards are so low.
Young child of Baltimore
City Schools,
you chant "I rise,"
one classroom over,
but how?
______________
I am sorry professor
I couldn't finish the readings you assigned.
I had to play my ukulele
the way you have to go to
the funeral of a family member
or the dentist
or your best friend's wedding
and then I had to
write about it.
______________
I sharpen pencils.
I write poems.
I want to
say
something.
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