I am in this picture,
though nobody knows it yet.
Look! You can see me. I’m
a little crescent, a slim
shadow against the underside
of my mother’s blue pantsuit.
She’s glowing. My father stands
off to the side, surrounded by
friends, though he’s not clowning
or posing for this one. Perhaps
he’s still amazed at how
they managed to pull it off
without him suspecting a thing.
His small apartment done up
in streamers and balloons.
A white cake, encased
in a ring of tiny flames.
At first glance, this could be
any photo in that old album. He’s
clutching his favorite brown bottle,
the one you see on every page.
But, direct your eye once more
to the space below her ringless hand.
See how I wait, in silence,
in darkness. It’s the moment
before he’s shocked into
celebration, before the light,
the jubilant noise. Before the
love he never asked for
floods the room.
—Previously published in The Evansville Review
After the est seminar
or the talk on positive parenting
at the Unitarian church,
she tiptoed into the bedroom
my brother and I shared,
and sitting between
our twin beds, as our minds
reassembled the shards
of the day,
she recited the suggestions
she memorized at the
hypnotist’s workshop.
She told me this later,
how she spoke to us then
of our talents, our beauty,
how much we were cherished.
It turned out her slumbering
children, eyes darting
nervously under the thin skin
of consciousness, were easy to love,
after the meditation tape,
a glass of chablis
and a valium. For nearly
five years, she performed
this nightly ritual.
I can only imagine the care
she took, her voice
so calm we must have thought
it was someone else
in our dreams, taking a deep
breath, then letting it go,
her soft words circling
above us, each one a tiny seed
borne on invisible wings.
—Previously published in Schuylkill Valley Journal
Before she came we walked for peace, we picked
up trash in parks and won awards. Our troop
was number one in candy sales. We cooked
for homeless families and served them soup.
And then her dad was transferred to the base
outside our town. I knew she was too cool
for us. But when they offered her the choice
between our club and military school,
she cut a deal, suited up in our red
and blue. She winked at me and stashed a pack
of Camels underneath her scouting vest.
And soon we’d lose ourselves to her, this chick
who taught us how to steal from liquor stores,
who littered on the streets and started wars.
—Previously published in City Works Literary Journal; also
appears in San Diego Reader (11 July 2012)
If I must be lonely, let it wash over
me in this place where water weaves
through stone and oak
branch bows down to adore
its leaves in the quivering
music of this creek.
If I must grieve, let it be against
the backdrop of this sky,
as an ancient star spends the last
of its light on a prayerless dive.
If I must be broken, let the shards
be scattered here, along
this red-twigged path, beneath
a thousand years of trees.
—Previously published in Parting the Future: California Poets
in the Schools 2011 Statewide Anthology
works as an astrologer and intuitive life coach as well as a poet-teacher with
California Poets in the Schools and Border Voices. Her poetry has appeared in the
anthology, The Giant Book of Poetry, and her first collection, Devil
Music, was published in 2005 by
Caernarvon Press.