April 29 (poem 28)

“five of eight”

sometimes love is
a box of See’s candies
five of eight of which
your grandmother ate
before she gave the box
to you.

April 29 (poem 27)

“imperfect anniversary”

It has been three and a half years since
I saw the candlewax version of you ensconced in a casket,
your cheeks completely the wrong shade of pink,
your eyelashes actually visible.
When no one was looking I touched the thing that had been
your hand,
and I could not wash the coldness off my fingers for days.
You did not look peaceful or asleep,
you looked like a casting of yourself.
Six months earlier you drove six hours to see me,
your first and only granddaughter,
graduate from thirteen years of doodling on public school desks.
You told me you were proud of me
and I didn’t understand why—
“It’s just school, Dad Dad” I said.
You were always Dad Dad because when my tongue
was first learning how to walk
it tripped over Granddad and fell on Dad Dad;
all five of your grandsons, tumbling out after me,
following my lead,
never learned the correct steps after that.
There are six of us
grandchildren,
and I am the only one who graduated
with you watching.
Now, as I prepare to walk again,
I wonder if you would be proud of me,
your bald-headed city-clinging granddaughter,
who you taught how to flip a fish inside out,
who climbed every tree you introduced her to
barefoot,
who begged for stories about hornytoads and rattlers,
who navigated Lake Chelan from the captain’s chair of your lap,
who brushed off beestings
and filled her pockets with river rocks shaped like feet,
but who never scooped together
enough courage to tell you she’s gay,
and who did not even cry for your funeral
until three and a half years later.

April 25

“Mimmie”

She had always wanted a girl.
When her boys were young and grasshopper-legged
she sewed the same three letters to the insides of all their exoskeletons;
she had named all three of them with identical initials,
different from the ones she had tucked away
for the daughter that never happened.

The first boy steeped in creation and
Creationism. He taxidermied birds and soldered stained glass,
storytold and storytold and storytold.
Now, chip-chinned and balding,
he preaches resurrection in a room illuminated
by mosaic windows
in a town the size of an illustrated
pocket-bible.

The third boy seethed in the loneliness of being the littlest.
He learned to whet his words and
throw them like daggers;
it was his only defense.
Now, with two boys of his own,
he uses his law degree to raise them to be
fastest smartest loudest but still
lonely.

The middle boy, as all middle boys must,
mediated.

But she always wanted a girl,
a long-haired rose-hip-lipped Cherokee-cheeked
girldollchild, not these
thorny-shouldered tumbleweed-limbed sons,
too bright to look directly at amidst all the blue of
a Wyoming sky.

The middle boy,
he’s my father.
On the day 45 years after she was born
so was I.
He whittled me girl and
sharpened me loud.

When I laugh, my noes wrinkles the same way hers does.
My cheeks are just as Cherokee as hers
but my eyes are more Wyoming sky
and my hands storytell loneliness.
She had always wanted a girl.

The Sunday two years ago we all held hands around her table
to celebrate the rising son
I rolled the boulder out from in front of my throat
and told her my hands held another girl’s.

All she could do was tumbleweed her head back and forth
back and forth and back and forth and
smile in a way that made her tears
collect in the raingutter wrinkles that her laughter
has installed on the bridge of her nose.

She had always wanted a girl,
not two.

April 21 (poem 21)

"convenience feminist"

“You’re a convenience feminist,”
my dad said;
his definition of feminist is
a woman who changes the oil in her own goddamn car;
and since I have a bike,
two good feet, and a license it took me six years
to nurture the courage to get,
I have little use for
oil.

April 19

“letter to baby brother”

you are born with a snake climbing into your belly like a hose filling you up with screams
like I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream
and it's melted all over you
vanilla ice cream from you splashing in mommy's bowl
mommy's big round moonbelly
you're as bald as the moon
you're as bald as Earl from church
daddy says he has a head like a ping-pong ball
but you have a head like a squashed peach
and frog legs;
I gave you a kiss, frog prince
but you didn't turn into a person
mommy says you will if I'm patient
I'm trying to be patient.

did you know you used to be a tadpole?
before you were a tadpole you were a dinosaur
and before you were a dinosaur you were stars
and before you were stars you were
nothing
probably.

frog prince, did you hear the songs I sang to you?
you should know your ABCs by now.
and twinkletwinklelittlestar.
frog prince, did you feel the kisses I sent blowing down mommy's bellybutton hole?
I will teach you all about dinosaurs
stegosauruses and tyrannosauruses and rexes
they all turned to bones when a star fell on them
and I will teach you all about stars,
how they're not fireflies or God like I used to think
but grandma says God is up there
and even though I've looked for a long time I've never seen him
although I'm pretty sure if God's up there then so is Jesus and Santa and the Easter Bunny.

firetruck mouth you siren so loud it wakes up all the people.
stop screaming so big
don’t you know it is hard to scream and sleep at the same time
and the three things you need to grow are water, sunlight, and dreams

so goodnight baby brother
goodnight frog prince
goodnight moonhead
I will play with you when you turn into a person.

April 1

"love letter to my body"
trigger warning: body issues, eating disorder

Dear body,
I have not always been the most faithful.
I have loved the Indianas of other women’s bellies
and the Appalachians of their ilia.
I have imagined their tiny clementine breasts in place
of your heirloom melons. I have
accused your hands of the crime of
being too wise –
I’m sorry for that.
I have treated you less like a temple
and more like a temptation
to call my skin sin.
From my father I received my nose
hairs,
doll-size ears,
and knees on rusty hinges;
from my mother,
feet that like to run,
myopia,
and the trichotillomania that compels me to
pothole my face
into a road so ragged it is difficult to
reach the destination of my eyes
without getting stuck along the way.

Dear body,
do you remember when Alex’s mom
used to call me Skinny Minnie and
you stood tall as birthday balloons
like you had accomplished something
simply by existing?
Remember when, three years later,
Mom said “chubby”
and you deflated like you had failed?
I know we have a grab bag history:
our handshakes with anorexia
(never a closer relationship) giving way to
our barnacle-knuckled grip
on body positivity.
I learned how to read a scale before
I learned how to take my own
pulse.
I have loved you loudly,
but sometimes those who love their
bodies loudest still believe they would
love their bodies louder if their bellies grew
perpendicular to gravity.

Dear body,
you have transformed paper into art,
bicycles into vehicles,
and rum into kisses and
impossible amounts of urine –
and people say you’re not magic?
you are not a temple –
you are the prayers that fill it.

Dear body,
I think you should know that
I did not learn to love the Venus curve of my belly
until I saw it shining on the
hip bone horizons of other girls.
I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work –
you’re supposed to love yourself before you’re capable
of loving others –
but
the human heart is capable of firehosing blood for 30 feet
just imagine how far love could travel
if you aimed it right
and what it could do
reflected in the mirrors of other people’s arms.