Writings from an Attic Office

On the way to Cooper's Landing

2007-06-28T15:09:00.000-05:00

I got it bad for a woman who can ride
just sit in the passenger seat and ride
while I drive down dirt roads repeating
is it this way or that
She says I don’t know babe, I’m just enjoying
you and this drive so take us baby
take us whichever way your hand
turns that wheel, just keep one
right there on my thigh while
I light this smoke and sit back
and imagine you and I riding just like this
in fifty years when I’m gray and your hands are crooked
when you’ve forgotten how broke you are now
or that your daughter is squirming away from you
and yes, I’m thinking of the day
when you’ve forgotten that time
you said you made me cry and I said
good

Things done I wish I could undo

2007-03-22T19:39:00.000-05:00

that we hadn’t gone to the market that morning for the butter nut squash
I was to cook with coconut and brown sugar or the watermelon,
small and seedless, your favorite, and those damn red delicious apples

that you hadn’t fixed the wobbly kitchen table my kids and I
abandoned months ago - when I’d cut their pork chops
I thought it would just collapse right there on the sleeping cat underneath

that I hadn’t bought you a toothbrush, the green one that stands diagnal
leaning up against mine, orange and worn because of my obsession
with teeth, yours sharp and noticeable, mine brushed countless times a day

that you hadn’t done that one load of laundry for me while I was at work
the one with the bathroom rugs that I should wash more often, the mint
green one that when freshly washed shows footprints by the shower

the one with your print, from the last time you were here

Drink

2006-11-26T22:49:00.000-06:00

at 90% water I am at low tide
sitting with my glass of amber
barley and hops drying my nucleus
hoping for a tickle of my brittle brain
you sip purity with a straw
with hopes that at 98%
you’ll hydrate into your own
private ocean
or evaporate from yourself
from me
when we hug my mouth is dry
and your eyes seem more aqua than hazel
I drive with thoughts of adult swim,
wet lakes where I can see the bottom
and you, poolside

Beach Walk

2006-11-26T22:46:00.000-06:00

the first time I saw a beach of pebbles I thought of you
how sand sprawled into forever, the way my foot sinks into it,
it has no beauty compared to this sound of water
receeding over pebbles, the tree trunks humbled by l
anding there on the beack of rock, so fortunate to be away
from gritty sand and those broken shells that stick into my tender arches
the way you stuck into me with sharp broken edges,
like a broken fossil, or the snail’s home
abandoned and broken by the raging waves,
how I hoped for smooth pebbles, dark and emerald
under Pacific waters and some pink like the parts I’d shown you
and standing on miles of smooth I laughed at my marginal self
wondering where you were and what jagged thing wasunder your feet

Just another thing to long for

2006-10-04T23:55:00.000-05:00

Told my daughter
yes my heart is pounding
though you can’t feel it
through these breasts of mine.
Yes, it is weird to put my hand up here
and not feel the rhythm
while I feel it inside,
feel the knot in my stomach
the shaking of my hands
with fingers long and narrow
like yours.
I never really thought of it
how I haven’t felt my heart
the same since I was about
your age.

He named her Leta

2006-08-16T14:48:00.000-05:00

I teach her to wash her face,
the white bumps nomads
across her freckly nose, she fears
she’ll never become a star,
never strut down a cat walk
or sing on a New York stage
I say hold your hands under,
cup them like a bowl
catch the water and bring it up,
it helps to blow out a bit,
yes make little bubbles, like
when I taught you to swim
in the plastic pool of star fish
and seahorses in the swampy yard
or at the lake where your dad
taught you how to put that slimy
thing on a hook
before we walked to Nanny’s grave
too soon, not yet situated in the earth
but still a mound your father
cried before, your 3 three year old hand
on his shoulder, with the purple
glittered star barrettes in your curly hair
The photos of you are the same
just miniature you’s they are
my star child, my gift of May
with sage eyes and serious brow
like dad’s I’m afraid
He also dreamt of being a star,
the sores on his hands unhealing,
strumming a base and singing
“I’m so lonesome I could cry”
while he sat beside me, one of us
comforted, the other the lonely one
as we looked up at the little town
stars, he put his hand
on my then flat belly.

Like Juliet

2006-08-08T17:19:00.000-05:00

give me a soliloquy to shed those water logged
words that creep through the hypothalmus
sometimes that even seep into the marrow of who

who it is that tortures the cells consisting of water,
nucleus and that in-between, it’s all that in-between
which separates, barricades like a city street arson show

show me the mirror you look into on Mondays that reflects
this drowning, wants-to-be-swimming tadpole
shimmering to the side of the baby food jar like it’s first grade

grade me on my speeches, they have been countless
these failed efforts at writing your languagestruggling to speak Hooked on, Suffering, Hopelessness

Loverboy

2006-07-10T20:53:00.000-05:00

I shout I love you when you sing
"O My Darling Clementine"
in an incestuous moment
that reminds me of my father
while in a sanctuary of bass drumming
Savannah ritual your rat-a-tat
heartbeat makes my lips quiver,
your broken poetry sliding
like a tear down my thigh.

Meanwhile you write of a woman on traintracks.
I see the soul of the rope and its pain
as it's tied in knots by the river
before being criss crossed over her nipples.

Then there's the way you say baby like crystal
without bubbles and the plexiglass
between mine and yours melts
like it's laying in desert sun
where I drink you like dromedaries do-
filling their humps.

I pierce you, my finger a bayonet
in your somnolent torso, weary like me,
hoping you pour out more for us to float on.

You the gondolier guiding me as I surround
your Venecian boat vessel.

On Being 34

2006-06-12T21:49:00.000-05:00

when I lie flat on my back
I tend to put my hand on my belly
sort of move it around and search
for those pelvic bones of pre-1996
before I ballooned in maternal
awe and willed my skin to accommodate

in my search there is this sense
nothing pre-1996 was of any importance
not even my young bones
that were once humped by
that one girl in college, the dark
one with eyes like sage and a voice
like honey, amber and slow
as she whispered that she couldn’t
help it, she just couldn’t help it

If you wonder what she is to you

2006-06-12T21:47:00.000-05:00

in the June stickiness, amid the stink of gloves
blood and mouse droppings behind the mats
where the radio shouts words of humpin’ and grindin’
the image that makes your mouth spread into
something like a smile when the big toothless
can collecting Broadway man asks,
whatcho thinkin ‘bout, fighter girl?

roadside, pulled over for some shut eye
at midnight, after starving all day and fighting
just for that high you get when you’ve beaten
an eatin’ kind of girl, when the eyelids
thank you for not being blackened
and curse you for not letting them close
the laugh you hear when you succomb

under a single sheet, used for comfort not warmth
on that couch you’ve been surfing on the last 4 days
shaking and teeth grinding as you cuss yourself
just before you jump up, grab the keys and go
into one a.m. to meet demons and make purchases
you lie about and mistake for errands, it’s
the voice you hear saying damn, love yourself
the way I do

Hunger

2006-05-20T11:04:00.000-05:00

she said I’ve been laughing myself off

down to the bone, the pretty one
that collar bone that pokes out under
collared shirts, the Izods of 1984

snorting, giggling and guffawing
hand to mouth, head thrown back
then hunched over, hand to concave belly

until water comes out of each eye
cold tears not yet warmed by grief
or fear or even relief or beauty

and now what’s left is the ache
in the half moon tips of her mouth
in her throat
in her diaphragm
down her
bending
scalloped back

The Face of a Son

2006-05-09T12:36:00.000-05:00

he said I have morning hands
as he sat half kneeling on the floor
finger over finger over finger
under shoelace inside knots
looking up when he spoke
not down at the mess of hand
shoe string leg knee
dimples on both sides
but around one
four freckles
in a sort of square
a lean-to shanty square
that will fall off and dismantle
when he is grown or half grown
or maybe tomorrow when
he is a bit more grown than today
and I will scoop them up
the little brown dots
and smooth them back on his cheek

Refreshing Beverage

2006-05-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

it’s really quite lonely
this sitting in front of the screen
how it hums every now and then
the house quiet, the cats asleep in the sills
the beverages
coffee, water, Dr. Pepper, coffee
in that order and changing
about every 2 hours,
yeah, that equals 8 hours
about the time I spend at the desk

the beverages seem to be a clue
howabout this

she wrote me a poem once
the only line I recall was
Your Dr. Pepper with light ice,
and it was the nicest thing
anyone could say to me
almost as nice
as the woman who said
I want to make love to you
and I said I had never heard that before
I mean I had heard of making love
but at age thirty something
still no one had said make love to you
it was like a summer Dr. Pepper
with light ice

Northern Ireland

2006-05-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

she said I lied when I said I had nothing to say

I had lots

but to hear you, just to hear you
while I sit in this room
with clothes strewn about,
the night before another holiday
of biking the beauty of places
you’ll never see
with those who only know that
falsetto voice

I think your Midwestern drawl
and deep loud laughter
will air my tires
or cushion
my head
pump potassium
into my
cramping
calves
while I
cycle
spin
ache
coast

As my daughter turns 10: Her lunch is on my mind

2006-05-05T14:18:00.000-05:00

I cannot write about peanut butter and jelly
school lunches and milk in mini-cartons

I cannot write about ham sandwiches with lettuce
and mayonnaise, crusts off, cut into triangles

I have no metaphor for oozing jelly
I can’t describe the cafeteria smell of brown bags

I can’t convey my disdain for kids with polished saddle shoes
and notes in their lunch bags

I can say that 11 years ago I went to a bookstore
that sold packets of lunch box note cards

They said, “Have a great day,” “Good luck on the test,”
“Here’s your favorite, enjoy!”

They had “XOXO” stickers to fold and close them
I bought three packages, I did not yet have children

It didn't matter

2006-05-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

that I didn’t get stalked back,
as I was on a one way street
traveling into a vena cava
over and over or
marching into a dirt farm
on the sidewalk

that words I imagined mouthed
deeply, coarsely never blew
into my neck or my eyebrow
the I know, I know
never written, faxed,
IM’d, scribbled on my dirty car

that I was the boy
in the bubble using sign
language, fore-finger-thumbing
the “L”, the curved fist of “E”
the single finger “T”
and continuing
“LET ME OUT”

it did not matter-
my non-reciprocated love

March Summer

2006-04-26T20:29:00.000-05:00

The attic smells of sex,
outside wetness,
mold, winter’s ashes
and baby crocuses.
A window prefectly placed
under the point of the A of the ceiling
with those curtains I
bought on a whim
hoping you’d like them
and their elegance amid
our thriftstore furniture
and faux finish paint job,
I look through it
at the space between my car and
that jerk next door and at the grease stain
from your jeep on the street.
In bed tonight
on sheets changed
maybe last Sunday,
I will search alone for
your stains there.

Nolie is Seven in 2006

2006-04-26T20:26:00.000-05:00

He is gap-toothed and lisping
and I want a time machine.
The digital snapshot/screensaver
is not enough.
The suffocating fear of computer crashes,
technology leap-frogging over my back,
grips me and tells me
the smile will crash
catch a virus
get wormed.
But a box, magic like snow,
may take me in 10 years
to this moment
where he spits Fruit Loops
through a gap and says
Thee what I can do?

Friction

2006-04-24T13:49:00.000-05:00

tires on the highway on the way to work
balding on this forty dollars
to fill up my gas tank commute

NPR discussing the fall of Sadam
when the statue hit the ground
metal clanking on the cement
pieces of Hussein flying about

the Easter bunny standing
behind the first lady
late night talk shows
joking that the bunny
was humping Laura’s ass

and you rubbing yours against mine
last night with the window open
while the cat drug the bird across
the porch leaving remnants
of feathers which
this morning brushed softly
against the doorstep

Stuffed Peppers

2006-04-22T09:06:00.000-05:00

I look forward to the skin
left in the garlic press.
I pull it out with a steak knife's tip
No other utensil is as justified and liberated.
I called in sick today
just to squeeze the cloves.
The house smells of clinging pans,
and steam
and love
and tomato
and irresponsibility.
Nolan is grateful and forgets
I am neurotic.
I wear a t-shirt that clings to my fat parts,
the sides that want to roll over my jeans.
He stares as I clear plates,
he does not miss
memories of me
when I was
his skinny mom.

Soulspace

2006-04-22T09:03:00.000-05:00

Soulspace

it’s the Big Bird pajamas, the only memory before 5, the bottoms of the matching set
and how toddler life is a little backside covered in baby blue bloomers
with skinny legs popping out like a small bird, the irony

it’s railroad ties in the backyard, only five feet high when I visited Gateswood Drive
as an adult and the deep laughter followed by tears when I remembered them
as the Mount Everest only my male siblings could climb

the bicycle from 1982 on that warm Christmas when no one had ever heard of testing out a bike-gift in December and the thought that Jesus himself had blessed the blue 10-speed and each ride around the block was another prayer of thanks

damn, if it isn’t the slumber party of 1986 after reading a Judy Bloom book
and the novelty of whispering in a group of pre-teen Catholics, “I masturbate,” and the silence that followed all the way until morning and the cruelness of them, and well,

the fact that I really didn’t even know what it was but my desire to make clever conversation from a book I read took over and testing out a new word was more pleasureable than the activity I would not discover until well into the 1990’s

and it’s The Scarlet Letter and Hester Pryne and To Kill a Mockingbird and eventually Longfellow and Plath and that professor from the community college who turns out, now that it’s 2006, I see was probably a guy just like me

the times I wake in the night and pull my car over and whisper over and over to rememebr when I don’t have a pen and the keyboard I think will need attention when I pound on it, the sound of it better than the rain in the attic downing out lover’s moans

the Times New Roman or Arial depending on the disposition and the moon and the flow of what needs to be purged to make room for more-
the ache to share it but to hold it like babies in the wind

Lily Ann

2006-04-11T10:30:00.000-05:00

your hands are warm like spring

let me put my feet
on yours
while you dance me
around the sun room
outside
the daffodils are droopy
while the irises
are only leafy
and I am waiting
for purple

Right it Here

2006-03-27T10:42:00.000-06:00

School counselor calls
could you come up here right away
daughter
crying in class
can’t do her times tables
with these fears swirling in her 9 year old brain
Fourth graders lined up
she blends in with the others
except for the red puffy eyes
and the dimple on the left like yours
Amid black history month
colorings of MLK and Rosa Parks
it comes like the pangs of 19 hours of labor
your labor with her
for her
You cannot save her and the
cruel
ironyof your efforts
end here
You talk about this day
speak as fast as your head can
find the careless words
But to write it
to record it
to right it
Well thenit becomes your
honest
packaged
under-your-skin
story

Driving Thoughts

2006-03-04T13:28:00.000-06:00

I saw a movie where someone said to his lover
I can’t quit you
yeah you know the movie, all the hype
but the quitting you thing
sort of sucked a little molecule
in the left aorta
where I keep the dumb stuff
stuff that seeps into my brain when I’m driving
the shortcut through the park
and that one tree, a magnolia maybe

and the flow of quitting you thoughts
seems to make the damn magnolia
lonely especially
in February when it looks tired
and it wishes for May like I do
because I have to wear a ski cap
and I look manly in them because my hair is so short
but my ears
they’ll fall off if I don’t

and the flow from the aorta
to my brain at the red light
just past the tree
is that
I can’t quit you molecule
and there’s an image of me
standing next to the tree
saying to no one in particular
I can’t quit you
and the tree
even in May
as I say
quit
it looks like February

I put my cynicism aside for one day

2006-02-23T23:54:00.000-06:00

A silly workshop on God and community
talking sticks, “I statements” and circles.

And harvest.

The speaker is exposed when she speaks the word,
a nunly woman in a peasant skirt and crystals
with the sweetest voice I ever heard,
eyes like grandma’s, blue and wise.

Harvest, harvest, harvest.

Webster- “to gather in a crop,”
The beautiful nun- “to listen, understand,
collect each other’s words, repeat with a goal of oneness.”

I once wrote to a woman, “We are each other’s harvest.”

Me- “what is needed for survival.”

Crash

2006-02-22T11:12:00.000-06:00

I wonder if I told you that today I am Howard Hughes,
that I am scrubbing and washing and counting
and repeating and repeating and rocking,
would you dry me and stop me and cradle me,
would you tell me that you will be my Catherine
or my Kate?
Would you tell me that I can call you whatever I want
even if today it’s airplane or rocket launcher or Mr. Senator,
Mr. Senator, Mr. Senator?

I wonder if you told me that today you don’t want insanity,
that today you are normal and grounded
and focused and present and healed,
would I stir you and tell you that your skin is softer
when you tremble, that I am quieted when we shake,
that I want you to be off the ground, to fly?

Salt Water

2006-02-20T16:48:00.000-06:00

I choose not to get a tissue
when the tear slides around
that apostrophe curve of her nostril.

I maintain my body languange
from before her eyes started leaking
my arms crossed high-
covering cold, vulnerable nipples.

In moments like these I like to touch things-
fold, unfold napkins
crumple cough drop wrappers
strangle my fingertip with the bread tie.

In my head I keep score of spoken low blows
and wish my dining room had a chalk board
like the one in the basement by the pool table.
Many more games are played up here.

I once went to a kid-friendly restaurant,
sat at a black slate table on which toddlers
could scribble while they waited
for grilled cheese sandwiches.
I wish we had one in green.
We could wipe it clean
with the water from her eyes.

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy

2006-02-19T10:56:00.000-06:00

A billboard on Highway 44
just a mile from my little homo abode-
"I considered homosexuality- then I found God."
Of all places, the national
"I was sick and thought I was a fag and then found God and am all better now"
rally is coming to my town.
My little dyke friends are forming anti-them rallies
and the little gay friendly-churches are running ads
saying, "we love Jesus AND gay people"

Funny, I feel a bit more islolated in that I was thinking...
more along the lines of our own little fire and brimstone-
my guess is the convention center has some flammable
materials in it somewhere...

Nolie is 7 in 2006

2006-02-16T16:14:00.000-06:00

Splitting the Assets

2006-01-18T09:55:00.000-06:00

The “Mom” coffee cup with a smiley-face sun
and fat apostrophe shaped clouds
sits on this table while the highlighter
screeches across another page.

I once stood holding its edge
with a man at the other end,
saying, do you like it here
or here?

From it a toddler picked first Cheerios
with finger tips like salad tongs.
It later found home where it now serves
as desk in this attic office retreat.

I want to pat it, smooth the cherry wood,
to say I’m sorry I said
I’d cut you in half before I’d lose you
as I ran to the shed for a chainsaw.

Inspiration

2006-01-11T15:47:00.000-06:00

You are the folds of Georgia O’Keefe.
While stretched canvas pleads
New Mexican canyons,
she strokes red canna
and calla lily
inspired by your pink layers,
a morning glory.

When She is Nine

2006-01-06T13:48:00.000-06:00

I just started to see her as pieces.

Today I am waiting for 4:35
when I can stare
at her right eyebrow.

Yesterday it was her upper lip
that I stroked with my paintbrush eyes
and tomorrow I will start on
her left eye.

I have already glanced at it
and I know
it has lashes like mine
but is colored by the genes
of her deceased father.

I expect I will greet him there
with my forgiveness and old love.

Kitchen Table

2006-01-03T10:40:00.000-06:00

With six of us, it had benches on either side,
chairs at the head and foot.
We aligned three on each bench,
parents in each of the two thrones.
For weekly pork chops and lasagna
I always had elbows in my ribs,
butter from Julie’s bread
making its way onto my sleeve.

But when I could
I would sprawl on a bench,
cool in the summer A/C
on my bare scrawny legs.
They would remind me of the therapist
who said I stuff things.
Christy, you are being a clam, just talk to us.
With tears and convulsing shoulders, I’d repeat,
I just don’t know, I just don’t know.
At the end I would wind up
ear to my dad’s heartbeat.
He would pet my black hair and say Shhhh.

I was the producer of dramas,
the screenwriter and director.
To sit on the cool bench,
no shared DNA on either side of me,
no butter on my sleeve,
was the like having her uterus all to myself
with his hand on her belly as I kicked.

Typical Day for a 3L

2005-12-02T12:02:00.000-06:00

Through the ficus tree I see a fellow student.
I heard he’s married to an old chick,
an attorney already with lots of money.
She supports his blond haired ass while
he goes to school to be one of her.

He always has a fucking smile on his face.
Not the shit eating grin my mom used to accuse my brother of,
not the I’m shy and an ass kisser and I’m trying to get people to like me,
not the I just got laid or I just had a big ol’ chocolate sundae smile.
No, the “I’m genuinely happy” smile that you don’t see very often.

I think I hate him.
I ask him where we are in the text.
I use a big smile too.
The, “I’m a chick in a low cut blouse and you’re married to someone twice my age whose tits probably sag much lower than mine and if I smile bigger you might be inclined to give me your notes because unlike your perfect ass, I miss class sometimes because unlike your old wife, my kids aren’t all grown and I missed last class because my daughter sprained her ankle and she’s only 9 and I hurt for her and was sick of her yelling at me to get her damn crutches and I was so exhausted I didn’t come to class last week so I am lost and the bitch professor will call on me tonight and I won’t be able to smile but instead I’ll stutter and be lost so please help a girl out, will ya.”

He showed me where we left off, and he smelled like old spice
maybe his old wife wants him to at least smell old
and I can still see him through the fake ficus in the law library
and I can only see parts of him
but I sure see that damn smile and I wonder if he can see my mouth
turned slightly downward, a frown as I read this fucking text book
about corporate law and take overs and the shit that his wife probably
coaches him on since she makes lots of money doing it and when I get out
I’ll be a pathetic public defender because my daughter sprained her ankle and my son had a phase last semester where all he did was throw up 3 times a week for attention because his dad moved away and I missed so much class that
I am in the 51 percentile, which is not good enough for the corporate firms that pay lots of money, the kind of money that would pay for a good college for my vomiting son and gimp foot daughter.

First Post

2005-12-01T10:05:00.000-06:00

Well, I've been told to get a blog, so here I am...having a blog. This is really just a test, only a test to see if I can figure out this thing. So, patience...to anyone who may read this damn thing.