February 3

He filled the tall glass again
with amber-colored liquid, tipped
back his head and drank
so quickly, I don't think
he could have swallowed.

I watched him swipe
the back of his hand across
his wet lips, and turn
unsteadily, toward me
his half-focused eyes staring
at the tiny patches of my bikini.

Reaching into his breast pocket,
"Here," he said, "go get yourself a cherry cola."
And so I ran barefoot
across the gravel lot,
knowing even at this early hour
the cold glass bottle would soothe me.

I drank it, slowly
watching the pigs,
rooting in the muck oblivious to me there,
peering through the slats
listening to the distant sound
of a combine in the field nearby.

Years later, we sat side by side
his sallow skin and rail thin thighs
next to mine, rocking
the porch swing slowly in the midday heat.
Reaching into his breast pocket,
"Here," he said, "you're a good girl."

And I knew my silence had soothed him.

*disclaimer

* I should have said this earlier, before I began this monthlong exercise, before I set my first poem before you, but here's the thing: I'm enthusiastic about this project, yet I'm more than a little scared that it will be too hard or that sometime in the middle of it, I'll get a bad case of nerves and forget my lines and the gong will sound and that will be the end of my experiment. But I'm going to try to write a poem a day for the month of February. Some of them may be okay and some of them may be terrible. None of them will be completely finished because I might not know much, but I do know that good poetry requires tireless revision and so what I write here is only the beginning of my process. It is only the first place I will write these lines, what happens to them next remains to be seen. But I am giving myself permission to write poetry, to try to write every day, and most of all to have fun.

And so begins Day 2.

The Largest Organ


My skin is just a layer
that protects organs and bones,
mere millimeters thick.
An insulator.
A regulator.
A communicator.
One glance at my ectodermal tissue
and even a stranger can easily tell
if I am well or sick,
afraid or embarrassed,
ugly or attractive.
But am I comfortable in this skin?
No one else may be able to see it
but the scar tissue is ropey and thick,
a furious red,
discolored and depigmented.
It wasn't a pot of scalding water
or a fire igniting the house around me,
but a slow burn
moving inch by inch
blanketing thousands of nerve endings
until I could feel
nothing.

Day 1

Envisioning what to write,
how to fill up a page,
the perfect words to expel,
which story i will choose to tell;
i ponder the minutiae of my daily existence.

No one cares about my piles of dirty laundry or the groceries i didn't buy,
or the painting i didn't paint and the dishes piling up in my sink.
No one cares about the noses i wiped
the floors i swept
the bills i paid
my walk to the park with the dog
or the mail piling up on my desk,
tipping precariously near the edge,
daring me to add one more envelope.

No one cares about the clouds in my sky
the peach-colored glow I admired,
those silky purple undertones
and the darkest hints of gray where rain must have been collecting.

No one cares to hear the song
i have played over and over again
until it’s words became my mantra,
Say you’ll wait, say you won’t
Say you love me, say you don’t
I can make my own mistakes*

Not even i care.

But what i have come to realize
is that maybe
somehow
picking up my pen
and putting all of this down in black and white
will remind someone
that it is these simple things
which band us all together.

We are not alone.



* lyrics from Before It Breaks, Brandi Carlile