Stew In Your Own Passion

In her newest book Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life (available soon at local bookstores, including Broadway Books and Annie Bloom's) Karen Karbo writes, "...one's life is enriched immeasurably if you're able to find an abiding passion. You don't have to be good at it, it just has to be something that would consume every waking hour if you let it."

Enter my years as a foster parent. In the decade 1992 through 2002, my husband and I fostered over thirty-two children.

Passion: It will fill your life if you let it.

Who knows the origin of such an urge? Maybe it was the motley crew of pets we had when I was a child: the assorted cats and dogs, both purebred and mongrel.

The cat I dressed in doll clothes and pushed around in a stroller.

Our dog Ginger, a Sheltie, my brother Jimmy and I loved but Mom hated because the dog yapped all the time.







Or the wild animal pets:

The raccoon cub that grew up and lived in our house for a couple years before it wandered off.

The river otter that my came as a pup after his mother was run over by a log truck.









As a teenager, I transitioned from caretaking family pets to horses and younger children. I spent a lot of time babysitting my little sister, affectionately known as Punky.

She just looks like a kid you'd call Punky, right? (I think the photo credit for this picture goes to my Uncle Jim, but I'm not certain.)

I trained a two-year-old filly to show at the county fair.







Surely, my entrance into the world of foster care must have been due, in part, to the Braack family who took me in when I was five.

I was a little girl who needed a family for a while. Doug, Pat, and their four daughters welcomed me
into their home.




As a young woman I became pregnant at twenty-two, a single parent at twenty-three. By the time I was twenty-six, Punky and another sister had come to live with me. I was eager to caretake others, so it was natural to open my home to them. I was bossy. I was opinionated. I was attentive.

You don't have to be good at it, it just has to be something that would consume every waking hour if you let it.

After my sisters seized hold of their own lives; after I married my husband; after his three grandchildren came to live with us, you might think I would settle down with my hubby and five children and think, "Well, now, I believe I'll just rest on my laurels."

But, no.

Some people are surprised to learn that over 58% of all Americans have personal experience with adoption: they, or someone they know, have adopted or relinquished a child for adoption. Nearly 2% of all American children live in adoptive homes. These numbers are a constant reminder that everywhere we turn, children need support.

I knew firsthand what it feels like to be a motherless child. All those years later, I opened my doors and said, "Come on in."

Twenty years later, I sat down to write what I had learned. Mother Up is the story of how I became the woman who says yes to children. "Yes," to foster children who needed a home. "Yes," to truant kids who needed support. "Yes," to students who required intervention to stay in school. Yes, yes, yes!

Mother Up is my newly completed memoir about my transformation from an uneducated, exhausted, single mother of twins to an expert foster mom sought after by child welfare agencies as a care giver for difficult-to-place children. It is the story of a child without a voice coming into her own as an advocate who speaks on behalf of a child.

Passion--the passion that Karbo recognizes in Julia Child--is what drives me to care about what happens to the children, and mothers, and fathers in this world. The competent ones. The incompetent ones. The hurt, discouraged,and frightened ones. The ones that nobody wants to stand beside because of the things they have said or done.

You don't have to be good at it, it just has to be something that would consume every waking hour if you let it.

It took Julia two hundred eighty-four pounds of white flour to perfect her recipe for Pain Francais.

It took 1600 pounds of laughing, squirming, bickering, impish children to help me better understand myself.

Here's one of them, learning to make pie.

Oyster Stew and White Flour

If I had to eat oyster stew, I'd be thin as a rail. Everything about oysters as a food choice disgusts me: the color, the consistency, the surface sheen, the ooiey-gooey-ishness of them that seems to cry, "HELP, I LOST MY SHELL." They approximate the nightmare version of the Wicked Witch of the West after she melted. So skip the oysters and pass the pain de mie. I am a woman after Julia's heart when it comes to eggs, butter, and flour.

But now, at my Best Middle-Aged _________ (fill in the blank) stage of my life, my medical chart includes hypertension and obese which is enough to send any middle-aged American woman's blood pressure through the roof.

(Fuck digital medical records that let you see what your doctors actually say about you. Okay, forgive the f-bomb. It slipped. But they don't use words like chubby or rotund or Rubenesque. They use the O word. And not the good O word.)

I've undertaken this Live Like Julia week with a fervor. Ironically, it means that I'm applying my passion and focus to making healthy choices (a euphemism that almost begs for another f-bomb) to improve my digital medical record--I mean, my health--instead of cooking the rich, delectable delights from Julia's cookbooks.

Like everybody (or maybe it's only the bodies I know) I like to have things the moment I want them.

Not so much how life works.

I've read "Rule #9: Make the World Your Oyster (Stew)" like, fifteen times in the last week. Since I've committed to stop overthinking things in my own head, I'm trying to get into Julia's, or at least Julia-as-channeled-by-Karen. Tonight I got fifteen pages in before I found the gold nugget.

Karbo writes, "This recipe (Pain Francais) is seventeen pages long." It took Julia and M. Paul Beck, two hundred and eighty-four pounds of white flour to develop the recipe.

The pearl for today?

Take your time.
Take as long as you need.
Take as long as it takes to get it right.

I didn't build this pasty white baguette of a body overnight and it's going to take some big-ass effort, some bad-ass attitude, and some serious-ass Julia Child's perseveration to improve conditions resulting from years of neglect.

 

My favorite position for my feet is shown above. This is why reading is such a delight. Feet up, brain engaged, dog snuggled.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to tuck those toes into a pair of New Balance tennies and walk the path I've decided to walk. I'm going to take as much time as it takes.

Thanks, Julia.

And thanks, Karen Karbo, for issuing an invitation to #LiveLikeJulia.

Rule 9, Subsection D: Hog the spotlight

"No one told Julia that middle-aged women weren't allowed to hog the spotlight..." writes Karen Karbo. Julia wasted no time whining that there were already too many cooks in the kitchen(s). She made space for herself.









I don't remember worrying about hogging the spotlight or being the center of attention when I was younger. As a toddler, I didn't seem to mind being center stage on       my grandfather's lap.



Later, when I was a single mother, I signed my three-year-old
 twin sons up for tap dancing and I got roped into joining an adult
jazz class.

I didn't dream we'd be asked to squeeze
into red sequin-spangled spandex dresses.
You can see that I wasn't built for tiny
tube dresses. My arms weren't made
for long sleek gloves. Still, I was more
like Julia then. I focused on the fact
that I had all the right (if not right-sized) equipment, the correct costume, and
I knew the dance steps. I lit a smile
and sashayed onstage to I Will Survive.


In the years that came next, when I prepared hundreds of sack lunches and mated millions of pairs of socks, I forgot what it was to be the center of attention unless it was focused on other people's needs, wants, and desires.

Julia's principle reminds me that it's not only sometimes necessary, or acceptable, to hog the spotlight,  getting attention can be fun. Take a new haircut, for example, which I happened to get today (I show a little lobe now!) or  getting a massage. My brain races like it's in NASCAR trial. Or when my brain slows down, words pop up one by one like the old "bouncing ball" reading filmstrips you may be too young to remember. Filmstrips? (They were a real treat when I was in fourth grade.)

I feel uncomfortable in the spotlight even when I'm supposed to be the center of attention. That's why Rule #9 is such a great chapter for me to tackle: I need to remember that the pearl doesn't worry if it's outshining the oyster. Like Julia, it just takes the space it needs to become what it is meant to be.

Overthinking Rule No. 9

Rule #9: Make the World Your Oyster (Stew) can be deconstructed into twelve sub-principles illuminated by Karen Karbo. (Over-thinkers Anonymous, here I come.)

A. Have everything you need before you begin.
B. Ignore the age spots.
C. Be the Best Middle-Aged __________ Ever.
D. Hog the spotlight.
E. Look good while you're doing it.
F. Stop over-thinking.
G. Identify your passion.
H. Take as long as you need to get the job done well.
I. Snore unapologetically.
J. Get your own bed if anyone complains about your night habits.
K. Let others be right if they must, but live your own truth.
L. Screw ambivalence.

I covered A, F, and L in my blog post on Friday, and addressed B on Twitter earlier today:

Rule 9b: Ignore the age spots. Good thing because six form a Big Dipper on the back of my hand. I'm not old, I'm celestial. #LiveLikeJulia
— deb (@iwritedeb) September 1, 2013

Today's focus was Rule 9, Sub-principle E: Look good while you're doing it. (Can you tell one of my undergrad classes was called "Effecting Change Through Policy Reform"?)

For Julia, that meant "skirts, blouses, and her famous pearls." She later had an eye job, face-lift #1, and face-lift #2. I'm not much for skirts, and I don't know any plastic surgeons that accept payment in pine cones or dessicated animal bones which are about all I'd have to trade. I have a graduated string of pearls I bought while I was in China. I'd be willing to accessorize like the Mighty J.

This young woman strung them while I stood there. I tried to learn a little Mandarin before we went. All I've really retained is 谢谢 (xiè xie) which means "Thank you." It came in handy.

I dug the pearls out today--I've never worn them--and put them on Julia-style, and then I took my lard butt outside for a walk on the property.

I can see why athletes and middle-aged walkers don't wear pearls while they work out because the pearls add a little weight and tend to curl up against any fold of skin they can find which in my case wasn't that hard to do.

But damn, I looked all pearly while I ambled through the trees.

Signing off with my Chinese name 石诗海 (translated loosely to mean Stone-Poet-Sea.)

You can see that I leapt out of bed with a cheerful countenance, threw on a lovely set of seed pearls… http://t.co/wIQcKhHs48

— deb (@iwritedeb) August 31, 2013

#LiveLikeJulia

Answering Karen Karbo's Call to Live Like Julia

I'm super excited about Karen Karbo's newest book in her Kickass Women series: Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life, due out in October, so it was only natural that I decided to play along with her invitation to Live Like Julia. The book is comprised of ten rules that Julia lived by, including one my kids would say I've already mastered, "Play the Emperor".

I decided to go with Rule #9 - Make the World Your Oyster (Stew) because I had no idea what that meant beyond life being full of richness (if you're lucky enough to find a pearl) or seizing what you want, as Shakespeare's Pistol declares, "Why then, the world's mine oyster which I with sword open."

Seize what I want? Like a pirate? Insert a knife between the shells and force it open for the treasure?

Then it occurred to me: Julia may have worn pearls but she made masterpieces of meat. It couldn't be about looking for treasure, hoping for treasure, dreaming of treasure, seizing opportunities and forcing myself in for my own gain, could it?

FADE IN:

Int. Doctor's Office - Day

I sit on the exam table devoid of bra or panties in that special washed-to-threadbare-thin gown (attire that gives physicians the assurance you will not run out before they're done talking) that ties in the back, trying to read her face.

DOCTOR
I'd like you to go on blood pressure medication.

ME
Yeah, I'm not going to take any medication.

DOCTOR
Well, yes, you need to.

CUT TO:

Me frothing at the mouth at home. A normal person might be pacing but pacing could be construed as exercise and god knows I don't exercise, so...

Here is where the insanity becomes clear. I know about motivating people because I spent several years engaging objects at rest (known to others as "students with below a 1.0 GPA) to become objects in motion, thereby passing their classes. I spent another couple years visiting truant elementary school students and their overwhelmed, underachieving parents in order to help the children engage in regular attendance. I even had a poster in my office at Oregon City High School that looked a lot like this:

Simple, right?

Karen remembers an episode of Julia Child's The French Chef where Julia cautioned viewers to "make sure we had everything we needed before we began."

If I'm going to reduce my blood pressure, I might need to make a list of what I'll need.

Turns out, I already have what I need. A gym membership, a yoga mat & video, yoga blocks (still in cellophane), pedometer, elastic bands, Fitbit to monitor motion and sleep, a trampoline, a nice bike, a hot tub (in which to recuperate) two arms, two legs, a body (if you can still call it that) and a head.

The head is the problem.

Remember that block that says, "I choose."--The one that I used to iterate and reiterate to students was the essential step in change?--I don't actually do that step. I'm fond of explaining to people that I don't actually like to exercise. Or to sweat. Or to feel my heart pounding in my ears. I once told my buddy Joe Koziol, "I am content living in my head," to which he replied, "If you don't take care of your body, where will your head live?"

See how a logical argument will ruin a perfectly good excuse?

My process--I didn't even try to share this with my doctor--looks more like this.

You might have to squint at the INTENT box because there's a lot of internal dialogue going on there. (Click on it if you're really desperate to read what my head traffic does.)

But back to my taste test of living like Julia. I read Chapter Nine: Make the World Your Oyster (Stew) and nowhere did it say that just because you eat what you like, you get to become a slovenly pig that hides out in jeans and sweatshirts. Not at all. Instead, Karen notes, Julia wore pearls while cooking.

Pearls? I could wear pearls while I exercise. That's ludicrous, isn't it? Like I'd be trying to look good, or something. Nobody accuses me of that now. Of course, I may keel over from a heart attack or stroke if I don't change the INTENT box to things that generate ACTION.

Which brings me to Julia's practice of refusing to overthink things. (I bet she never knew how great it feels to think so much. Like I don't understand pâté. Give me a slab of beef, medium-well.)

I don't think I can stop the overthinking part cold turkey. It's radical. I need a cigarette just thinking about it and I don't even smoke. I've decided that my part of the Live Like Julia, Rule #9 is going to need to skip intent all together and get straight to action. Julia was not a woman who wallowed in ambivalence. She prepped, she cooked, and she served. Action-action-action.

I'm going to get my ass in gear and I'm gonna wear pearls while I'm doing it. Screw ambivalence. For seven days, I'm not gonna overthink, I'm going to overdo. I'm going to sweat, beating heart and all. If any of you bloggers living Rule #10: Every Woman Should Have a Blowtorch, see me lolly-gagging around like I'm waiting for the perfect oyster to detach itself, roll ashore at my feet to reveal a precious stone, do me a favor: Brandish a little flame low enough to get me out of my head and onto my feet.

Insidious Beasts

You sit in somebody’s living room and try not to stare. Try not to let your eyes scan the room like a streak of light, or if you do, hope to make your face flat and quiet, as if what the lenses capture is without impact. A carefully watered plant holds the same weight as a ragged shoe or yesterday’s remains from the dog nobody let out. Truancy isn’t about the house.

Still, it’s hard to hold the eyes of someone who won’t make eye contact, and when their eyes lead yours, it’s almost impossible not to dance. Whatever the condition of the home, you can bet there will be apologies offered, as if a child’s pattern of absences is exposed in shameful household deficits. Truancy is about patterns, which the environment eagerly reveals.

I’m in a home that reeks of yesterday’s urine and this morning’s feces, last night’s dinner, yesterday’s dirty clothes. I’m demonstrating to the family how to comb nits from the hair of a child who can’t ever remember not having them, whose entire school career—four years—is punctuated not with spelling tests or classroom parties, but absences due to blood-sucking parasites.

I don’t think it was lice the secretary saw, the mother tells me. I think it was a flea.“Well,” I say, “they don’t want fleas at school either.”

I separate a thin strand of hair with the tail of a comb, then pull the segment of hair taut between the child’s head and my fingers. Sun filters through hazy windows as I point out how live nits glisten like crystals. Semantics won’t help the child’s head, but they may save the parent's pride.I'm not against them saving face during the interminable process of nit-picking. Medical experts will tell you head lice is not about cleanliness, but experience will remind you that it is about attention to detail. This home clearly needs more of both.

* * *

I knock at the door of a well-manicured home in a new subdivision. The mother invites me in, serves iced water in a sparkling glass as we sit in the family room on soft leather chairs. Everything is clean and in its place. The student I’m about to meet has become expert at excluding herself from school and the parents are frustrated with their lack of control.

“Where is she?” I ask. The mother’s chin lifts toward the stairs, as if she is so tired of the battle she cannot even raise a flag to defeat. She leads me up to the girl’s room and opens the door. The room is dark with tidy curtains. A shaft of light slips around one edge of the fabric, catching the silver gleam of the television, the stereo, the cell phone charging in its cradle. Sterling necklaces dangle on corner of a mirror. Earrings glint on the dresser top.

“How you doing?” I ask.

The teenage girl in the bed remains with her back to me, facing the wall. Blankets cover all but a tuft of black hair on her head.

“Mind if I sit down?” I ask, not waiting for her answer before I plant myself on the corner of the queen-size bed. Her mother withdraws from the room, leaving the door ajar. For half-a-second I conjure how sitting alone in a truant student’s bedroom would appear to an outsider. Or to my boss who doesn’t understand most of what I do, but likes the way reduced number of absences stack on a page.

“So you have cramps?” I say.

She grunts acknowledgement and shifts a little under the lump of covers but doesn’t make any attempt to engage.

“Take anything?”

I can’t, she says. It’ll make me puke.

“Oh…” I say. “So you can snort coke and drink beer, but you can’t take Ibuprofen?”

Her head snaps out of the blankets to size me up, then she rolls onto her back. I can see half her face now.

That’s right, she says.

“Big problem.” I tell her. “Because you’re going to have periods for another thirty years, so we gotta make a plan.” She rolls her eyes and glances at the cell phone on her nightstand. Examines her fingernails in the half light. She closes her eyes and then opens them to check if I’m still there. I am.

“You like Starbucks or Dutch Brothers’ coffee?” I ask.

"Never had Dutch Brothers."

“Well,” I say, “You better get up, so we can take a trial run because tomorrow morning I’m going to be here at 7:15, cramps or no cramps, and I need to know which coffee to bring because we won’t have time to stop for another if I get it wrong.”

She rolls on her side to face me, propped on one elbow. Smiles. Asks if I really think she’s going to go out looking like this, waving her hand at her face and hair.

“Dutch Brothers is drive through,” I say. “So you’ve got five minutes to do your face and fix your hair. Everything from here up,” and I gesture from my shoulders skyward.

I turn and leave. Hear her rustling around in her room before I’ve even touched the bottom stair.

Is she going to school today? her mother asks.

“We’re just taking a trial run,” I tell her. She’ll be back in half an hour. But tomorrow, she’s going to school.”

Missed school days are insidious beasts. They creep up one moment at a time: one lesson, one class, one day passed without the benefit of school. It doesn’t matter whether the sparkle that keeps a child home is due to the reproductive habits of parasitic pests, the allure of a computer screen’s alternative world, or the call of friends on the silver cell, the damage is the same: missed days equal missed education.

Some children who have too many treasures miss school as often as children who have too few.

What To Expect if I'm Appointed as Your Child's CASA

I am an unpaid volunteer appointed by the Court to investigate and monitor the things that happen in you and your child’s life while your family is involved in dependency court. I sometimes facilitate communication, resources or services; and I advocate, in and out of court, for things that need to change.

Some judges call me the eyes and ears of the court. The voice of the child. As a CASA, I made a pledge to ensure that the Court, the child welfare agency, and your child’s attorney fulfill their obligations to your child in a timely manner .

I will meet you face to face, and get to know your child. I will talk to the people involved in your family’s life: social worker, attorneys, counselor, addiction specialist, teacher, doctor, child care provider, psychologist, neighbor, family members and friends. I'll visit you in your home and in the community. I will observe visits between you and your child. I will visit your children in the foster home and at school .

I will review documents. I will hear about your failings, but also seek to understand your strengths. I hope you will share what you do well and what kind of support you have available in your family and community. I will ask many questions .

In court, I will stand beside you, or your child, if they’re old enough to attend—or beside your attorney, or your child’s attorney, or the State’s attorney, or the social worker—at a long table in the juvenile courtroom. I will have a legal pad and a cheap pen, a Bic maybe, or a Zebra, or—on a good day—a Precise V5, blue ink .

Seated at the table facing the judge, I will make note of what each party has to say. I will take stock of the state’s accusations, itemized on the petition as alleged acts or behaviors. I will jot a list of everyone present. I will watch who talks to whom and for how long. What is their body language? How do they occupy space: Hunching close? Leaning well apart?

I will take time off work to appear in court. I will miss my own child’s soccer game to meet when you get off work. I will visit you on weekends or evenings if that’s when you can be home. I will think about you and your child on holidays. I will live with your family between my ears.

I will form opinions. I will share them with you and the other parties. I will push. I will prod. I will rub people the wrong way. I will strive to be respectful and compassionate, but sometimes what I say will be hurtful. I will feel sorry for that, but will say it anyway on behalf of your child.

I will write a report to the court that includes a summary of why your children came into foster care, how they are adjusting, your progress to fix what’s wrong, the efforts of the child welfare agency to help you, and recommendations about services that may still need to occur. I will give kudos where they have been earned. I will ask the court to remedy what has gone wrong.

I will encourage you to make the changes necessary to reunify your family, but my primary focus is to ensure your child has a safe and stable home in a reasonable length of time. I hope it is with you. Whether it is or not, I will advocate zealously for your child.

From Boxing Peers to Boxing Dogs, Vacuuming is Key

Today I was at an elementary school and met a little guy who was having a hard day. He'd been sent to the principal's office for hitting other children and he was perseverating about one of his favorite topics: vacuum cleaners. Did I have a vacuum cleaner? he wondered. I said I did. What brand? Darned if I could remember.

"Maybe a Hoover," I said.

You don't know? I shook my head. Can you draw me a picture of it? I told him I couldn't draw well and asked him to draw it for me. What does it look like?

I described my upright vacuum while he asked me if it was short or tall, if it had a rotating beater brush and what kind of attachments it had. Does it have an extender rod? Could it suck up a dead mouse?

I asked how old he was. He ignored me. I asked what kind of vacuum he had at home.

Oreck.

"That's a good one," I said.

Do you have a shop vac? I said I do. What brand? I didn't know. He was incredulous.
What kind of vacuum do you use to vacuum your car?

"I don't usually vacuum my car. What do you like besides vacuums?" I asked.

He ignored my question. Can you please draw your vacuum? He passed me a piece of paper and a blue Crayola. I asked him for a brown crayon instead.

You have a brown vacuum? What brand is it?

He watched me draw from across the desk; the image was upside down to him. That's a funny kind of vacuum.

I kept drawing, adding a table with plates on it and a few bits of food on the floor. I turned the picture around to show him.

A smile spread on his face. Your vacuum is a dog?

"Boxer brand," I said.

I told him I thought it would be a good idea if he didn't hit others--maybe he could earn more time using vacuums. "You could even study them. That way," I said, "you 'll be an expert and you will be able to design better vacuum cleaners than anyone else and maybe someday you'll design your own brand of vacuums with your name on them."

He grinned ear to ear.

I believe it. This child's passion could translate into that kind of success. But first he needs a little guidance.

We want to talk about one thing, but we end up talking about another. If we're patient and let them lead, sometimes they come along.

The Beat Goes On

As I arrive at my CASA child’s home, the birth parent throws open the door to the apartment, calling to the child, Sweetie, your angel is here.

“I’m no angel,” I say. The parent shrugs it off as the child comes running to greet me with a fistful of popcorn. She offers me a bite as I bend to say hello.

Inside, I sit on the sofa and notice the house looks a little messy. I wonder how the parent is coping with the child being home.

The child toddles out of the living room and returns with a book. She climbs up and nestles alongside. The parent offers me coffee.

I say yes, even though I know it’s going to be Sanka with a rounded spoon of brown sugar and a splash of nonfat milk. One of the things I was taught in training was, Never refuse a cup of coffee or tea. It's an invitation to stay a while.

The child’s eyes are heavy by the time the parent brings my coffee. She stayed up past naptime waiting for me to arrive. I know how challenging it can be with toddlers who fight sleep. I am curious how the parent will do getting the child to bed.

The parent goes over to the CD player, turns the CD player on low, and sits down with her own cup of coffee. "Jesus Loves Me" begins to play; in the background, the soft thrum of a mother’s heartbeat.

The child looks at me, then her mother, slips off the sofa and runs out of the room, returning with a satin edge blankie trailing behind her. She runs to her parent and lifts her arms: the universal sign for up.

You ready for nap? asks the parent.

The toddler nods.

Mom picked her up and carried her to her crib. And that was that. The child’s mother and I visited for an hour or so, I finished my Sanka, and went home.

Except, a couple years later when I had another baby, I went out and bought the Heartbeat Lullaby Music. I played it for our son during naps and bedtime from birth well into elementary school. Bedtime was always a peaceful transition for him.

Sometimes, you go out to learn something to benefit your CASA child and you learn something that benefits your own.

Outside, Looking In

This week I went out to visit my CASA children. They had each painstakingly cut a Valentine from pink construction paper and signed their name in large block letters. One, in the shape of a deeply curved heart with abrupt edges, like wings of a moth that had been snipped off midflight. The second was a rectangle folded in half, adorned with sparkly stickers reading "Sweetheart". No one has given me their heart in a long time, nor has anyone shown such interest in my arrival.

I saw you in the window, the small child says, curving her palms like a pair of parens and holding one on each side of her face, mimicking the way she peered through the one-way mirror into the observation room when I was at Childrens Services a few weeks ago to observe a visit with her parents. "It's my CASA!" she said to her birth parent. I had hoped to observe unnoticed, knowing that however unobtrusive a CASA tries to be, his or her presence affects the parent-child interaction.

The image of her little hands cupped around her face made me think of an older child in another family, some time ago, who told me that visiting her parents in an observation room was like being a monkey in the zoo. Everyone stares at you. Such insight reminds me that even when we are mindful and considerate--even when children hand us their hearts--CASAs are in the business of asking children to trust us despite being strangers, despite being on the outside looking in.

Step !b: Sit with Your Curiosity

I knew C71585 meant that I needed to style my hair and put on a little make-up. The last time I'd had my cosmetics out was when my great-granddaughter was over playing and wanted to decorate me. She carefully applied layer upon layer of powders, blushes, and shadows until finally, when she offered me the mirror, I first asked her, "Do I look beautiful now?" She pressed her lips together solemnly and shook her head no. I looked in the mirror.

Indeed! I did not resemble beautiful. She had streaky sparkling jet black eye shadow striping my face like a zebra hooker. Between the stripes were blotches of slick pink lip gloss and shimmery purple eye liner. I looked like a Zebra floozy who'd been on a weekend binge.

Tonight I applied a little moisturizer, eye shadow and picked a mild blush that wouldn't detract from the popping the Nordstrom clerk promised would occur between my C71585 tank top and gray jacket. I carefully stroked the brush along my cheekbone (or where my cheekbone should be under the dollops of fat that rest upon my cheekbone) and what the fuck? I had dark black war stripes from cheekbone to ear. Obviously I'd not taught my great-granddaughter the art of cleaning one's cosmetic brushes.

After removing the war paint, spraying fluff-magic spray on my hair and getting dressed, I considered the results  with  a skeptical eye. See that little picnic table on my right shoulder? For the gremlins who are going to list my transgressions on the way home.

I even managed to slip out of my uber comfy Birkenstocks and into a pair of inexpensive, reasonably comfy, definitely not pissy-with-attitude, but not dull either flats. So flat I could count rocks through the thin footbed on the way to the car.

You can see my basket of skipping rocks that my son Brady Spicer gave me, and my grandkids Kenny and Mariah refilled with rocks once. I'm almost out of rocks. I need a stone fairy to come and leave me some more round thin rocks for skipping on the lake.

Dinner was great. I had salmon with lime essence jasmine rice and fresh asparagus. Delish!

I won't bore you with the details, but I did my best to listen more attentively and ask questions. I'd give myself a C+ on the listening...I learned something new about each of these friends even though I've known them some years. And I asked each of them a question or two that afforded them time to talk, but I didn't put much effort into follow up questions or even creative questions to start with, so I'd say that was about C-.

I earned an F for interrupting because I interrupted several times (SEVeral times, my gremlin says with the affect of an asshole) and I used the F bomb six or seven times when I was telling a story, which isn't the greatest table talk, but the F bomb was the story--I was recounting one of Cheryl Strayed's stories from Tiny Beautiful Things and in that particular story there is no story without the bomb because the story is WTF, WTF, WTF. So maybe I should have just picked a different dinner time story.

Especially because when I start to tell a story it's way too easy to forget the don't-talk-longer-than-thirty-seconds-at-a-streak rule I adapted from friend Jack's recommendation on making chitchat. So I'd say a D for appropriate conversations (appropriateness of topic, narrative duration, relevance to preceding conversation.) My gremlins really hammered me all the way home for the Fuck issue. But one of the two friends had lost her job, so fuck seems appropriate  even if the tables and candles and servers there weren't accustomed to it in that milieu.                                                                                                               

I came home and had a little throne time to reflect on what I might have done differently. Several things occurred to me:

1. Don't go. Simple. Easy. Can't fuck it up.
2. Practice more. Practice with my husband (oh...boy....) Practice with my kids. (Aiyiyi.)
3. Wear duct tape as an accessory. Or better, in place of lip gloss. Remove with discretion.
4. Shoot the gremlin on the picnic table. This is not funny because there have been too many shootings lately that hurt people. One today just a few miles from where we ate. Disregard this idea.
5. Let the gremlin wear duct tape.
6. Ask Merry & Marcy for feedback; contrast & compare with Gremlin's disgust. Rectify.

That's it for tonight!  Next up, a Celebration of Life coming up on Saturday with lots of family members I hardly ever see and people I won't know. This will be a four-hour chitchat session. I'll be exhausted. With a three hour drive home afterward my Gremlin with have a field day, don't you think?

Step 1a: Admitted I Was a Fat Slouch

Tonight I went to Nordstrom’s as my Facebook friend Jack suggested. Jack is a friend I met online thirty-five years after we attended the same high school. Back in the day, I thought he was a renegade; now I think he’s a cultured dude with great taste in furniture and food.

He suggested I go to Nordstrom’s because of this post on my Facebook page: I want to learn to mill about, look cute, and make delightful social chat. Who’s game to teach me?

Jack said to ask the clerk for help picking something out to wear out for social events, so today I geared up by getting out of my slouchy Forks hooded sweatshirt and too-small jeans, and into a pair of white capris and a white hoody.

I didn’t want to ask the store clerk for help, but she approached me. When she asked if I needed help, I said no. That’s because the big-butt department is small and I knew it would only take a few minutes for me to peruse every rack, especially because some things don’t even make it to the Consider pile in my mind.

Who designs all the wild, big pattern prints that makes big women look enormous? I didn’t try on any of that. I picked two lightweight jackets that would work for casual wear and a black Courtenay-would-be-proud skirt for sassy evening wear.

The purple jacket was nice but it was $148 and I wasn’t ready to commit to purple for that price. Besides, I was worried purple made me look like an eggplant. (I don’t wear bright red or orange for similar fruit-related reasons.)

The light gray jacket, made of silky cotton, felt like a lightweight hoody without a zipper or hood. It was on sale for under $50 and it looked alright, so I kept that. The Courtenay-hoo-haw skirt fit great, and it had an exciting flounce when I walked—but I couldn’t figure out what kind of top I'd wear with it. I decided I looked like a fat frump trying to look good, which made me feel bad, so I skipped the skirt.

The gray jacket seemed a little drab, but the clerk recommended a tank top in bright purplish red. I told her it was brighter than I usually wear and she said, “Bright colors pop out against dark ones. That’s what you want.” When I got home I looked it up on the color spectrum chart. It's really close to color number c71585 ~ I hope it’s not too crazy bright. (Can I still wear one of my favorite pair of thrashed Birkenstocks or do I need to actually coordinate footwear like a fashion commando? I should ask Jack.)

Earlier today, I had coffee with my friend Maria, a new social work graduate, who is sexy and funny and cute and sociable in all the ways I’m not, and I told her about my Facebook post. (It’s not bad enough my friends endure reading them; later, I talk about them.)

I was explaining (as if she didn’t already know) how awkward I am at social chitchat and how I don’t take turns; once I start talking I just blather on and on and onandonandon until people hold their breath and pass out so they don’t have to listen any more. Worse yet are the drives home by myself in which I rehash every social blunder and faux pas that occurred until I wish I had never gone.

Maria smiled at me—she has an amazing smile—and said, “It’s true you like to talk…but you're also curious. So when you're with people in a social situation, try to be present with your curiosity.”

I’m not sure that’s exactly what she said even though I put quotation marks. When I learn to listen more intently without my brain racing forward and sideways at the same time, I will actually be able to quote people.

Tomorrow, I have a dinner date with two friends I don’t often see. I'm going to wear my new c71585 shirt and gray jacket. I might be totally mismatched on the bottom with skanky old jeans and Birkenstocks, but that will be under the table, so if I get there early to be seated before they arrive, they won’t know. Decorating the top half might not be enough, but I have to start somewhere.

I'm going to try to ignore that c71585 is too bright. I'm going to order something that doesn't contribute to my eggplant, tomato, pumpkin worries. And I am going to be present with my curiosity to see if my internal critic has less to say on the way home.

Playing with Words: Day & Night

Mother's Last Dance

for Del

You make it easy to suffer the loss
of importance in the world
show films of our true selves
as you dangle just out of reach.

When others come running, touched
faces disconsolate, the ice burst
settled in your skin,
I become the burnished sun
you rest against. Their breath

writes slow notes
in your periphery. They stand
bedside, hoping
to apprehend the music you are
dreaming; they cannot stand
you living in previous time.

You remain in the now
this very moment, close
to death: Its softness.
Its gentle kiss good night.

Who Lights the Green of Spring?

Who warms the score of spring, so does entice
the daffodils to variegated light?
Who presses emerald quarter notes to slice
the winter earth as proof in her own right-
no voice may soil the land, no deed so dark
she cannot free the essence to transform
cruel acts to her melodic beauty mark:
crocus mastered in sonata form.
Her tulips burst to song from dust and rot
with roots entangled deep beneath the scene,
and petals bloom as hope's forget-me-not.
Her forte is to flourish in between
the intervals of metered choice and chance
to measure every season's happenstance.

Overdue

I believed you could pull silver from the sky. I believed words mean. I understood eyes.

Now, my arm wags off my shoulder thinking I know the answer. Teacher never chooses me. I wait at the window for mommy to return. She never arrives.

My soul stirs to yours. Mind anticipates voice. When I wake with my body curled around possible-yous, morning’s thought is your face. Your hands haunt me.

I carry the stillborn moon. Its unremitting orbit. Its relentless dark side. I mourn the birth that never comes. The nestling of bodies I yearn to know. I bend double under the weight of our debris.

I carry you way past term.

She Wasn't One to Give Up

The multi-grain bun halved, then filled
with ground round, crumbled
blue cheese,tangy
red tomato, oozing
barbecue sauce and hot mustard
appealed to him. She

drip
drip
dripped

upon the small wood table
where they sat
with the newness of coming
to know one another. He halved
the table, just as her arm
trailed through the drops,
giddy laughter spilling
from her lips, honey
eyes vaulting the table.

She loved, she said, a man
who knew how to touch.
He planned, he said, to give up
meat for Lent. Not her.

Backyard Bundt Cake

Find a good tree with a bald patch
at the base of the trunk. It is perfect
if erosion has worn away a bit of root
to form a puddle from yesterday’s rain.
Find an old Folgers can (rusty will do)
and a thick stick to stir the goo
you will make from two handfuls of dirt,
a bunch of dry leaves crackled into bits,
and (don’t balk now) a bit of dog doo
from over by the back fence. If the tree
is cedar, gather a handful of tiny cones,
stir them in whole. If it’s fir,
you only need one. Crush it
underfoot so the scales slide free.
Mix them in your muck with a little green
grass and dandelion wishes. Stir
vigorously. Your arm won’t get so tired
if you sing, “Delta Dawn, what’s that flower
you have on? Could it be a faded rose
from days gone by?” Make a circle
of small pebbles on a hot sidewalk.
Spread the batter inside the round rocks.
Bake till crusty brown.

Questions for Carol

We make no reason fit
the means or mode or minute
that eased the load of soul
from here to there. “Senseless...”
we say, afraid our own death
lurks alongside. Afraid
we lack courage to face such choice
alone. Did you find the welcoming
you lacked in life? Did everyone
seem happy to see you, despite
your selfish act? Is your life better
now that your dead?
Here, even those who do
not miss you, per se,
notice you are gone.

(In)communicado

The silences are you, too. Still,
they wear me like
wind wears autumn.
Restless. Churning.
The way sand wears skin
raw. As gravel in my knees
is silent
after the fall. How blood
seeps in syncopated beats
behind closed eyes. The way
one breath exacts the next
in a long hall of sighs.

Weather
Rockaway Beach

Wind coughs and sputters, chokes
rain bursts along pine cone perimeters,
slipping to bed of earth
between heavy blankets of fog.
White horizon, gray sky.

Gulls open themselves to rising
columns of air, unfold
and release themselves
on waves unseen. Bodies held aloft
heads cocked, wings banked,
hold a steady eye. Others

lock wings like shutters, hunker down
at the edge of the frenzy, peck
where froth rolls and breaks. They search
the tossed and torn
for sustenance, shriek and squawk
how difficult it is to survive.

Tattoo Lovers

The private path of friendship softly worn
and lightly trod so as not to leave tracks
nor track leaves inside the messy sworn
monogamy each of them transacts,
now sketches ways to paint the intimate
time lost in not enacting passion’s spark.
Such art might illustrate the yearning heart
without the breach of touch: let ink embark
along that bicep, this hip— now enshrine
majestic boughs of cedar sweeping low
where spread of moss and bodies dream entwined,
a forest bed held warm as breathing slows
and filtered sun unfolds to shades now drawn
where fevered art depicts such want foregone.

Forget Sartre and Thoreau

A life I want frittered away
in details: confusing play
with love; love with affinity;
confusing equanimity
with mutuality displayed

as smiles. Believing right-of-way
of hearts trumps any dossier.
Be-ing without fraternity.
A life I want:

God in your eyes. The Milky Way.
Grave and glorious disarray
of masks unveiled. Divinity
of soul revealed. An open soiree
of one beloved passion play.
A life, I want.

Men She Had Known

iii.
He beat her silly
with his easy manner
and promises, gleaming
copper etchings
never materialized
the night he served her
Sake in a Mason jar
with a nightcap
of Latex, so nothing
could touch him.

iv.
He plunged fingers
deep in the dark,
sought moisture
to quench his thirst.
If only he could have
dampened her
against his rigid
pride, he might have tasted
the oasis in the desert
between them.

v.
She watched him strip
away the layers
he wore in the world,
stood before her, bare
souled. She bought
the whole package,
wrote receipts in poetic form,
although he had little
to give her, being
fully clothed and otherwise
spoken for.

For You, Who On My Birthday, Celebrate Your Birth Day, Too
Lisa, Kerri, Ben, and Ron

To share the day our mothers bore
the weight of birth as underscore
to sex enjoyed with charity,
their clothes cast off familiarly,
bodies sung as eyes explored

consciousness tossed overboard.
I like to imagine years before
you conspired with me in parity
to share the day

of yesteryears our mothers bore
their body’s soliticious shore.
Our pre-breath solidarity
in utero dexterity, treading water
in mother’s core, till time
to share the day.

Biker at Starbucks Naps

Patrons patronize the coffee shop
and each other, except he
whose grizzly chin rests
against his black leather jacket.
His chaps, tight on thighs,
cropped at the most male parts
now nestled without the steady hum
and buzz of Harley, its headlight
cocked to one side, waiting
as its owner’s head lolls then, too
until they are all three
parked at the same slant.

Palm Reading

They sway as one. Yet,
when the hour comes,
neither frond nor palm suffer
the parting. Leaves turn
green to brown
rustling earthbound,
each demise incrementally closer
to the hollow finale.

Palms die a little at a time,
no purple heart
to memorialize courage.
They refuse to measure loss
as anything but living.
Even now, they undulate
in the breeze, beckoning,
"Come. My coconuts are ripe
for picking."

Imperfect Parcels of Gratitude

Mother Relinquishing
You opened thighs,
bore the loss of shaping
who I would become. Determined
to help me to enter the world, flesh
stirred within, conceived me
before I understood consciousness
myself. You offered me
life. I thank you.

Mother Receiving
You opened your arms,
bore the pangs of my indifference
as I sought origins of my beginning.
In due time, you conceived
me needing a history of my own
cellular division to meld genetics
with experience. You offered me
sanctuary. I thank you.

Late October
for Caroline

The heat has come late,
and unexpected. Listen,
there are no ears left
on the sweet corn. Stalks
torn from the earth. Rows
and rows of pumpkins
cut from the vine
like too many red-headed dolls
decapitated by jealous

brothers. Listen,
sometimes it is not
a brother
whose hands
do not understand.

Sometimes, heat
will rise out of season;
a mother forgets
how easily tulips
bruise.

This one, listen—
she didn’t mean
for the lavender pollen
to stain her daughter’s
forehead.

Before the coroner’s report,
she had never even heard
the word petechiae.

Response to Matthea Harvey’s Call for Guerilla Poetry
On the occasion of two honored poets’ decline*

i. Seamus
Not exactly a pissing shame.
It would have been enough to scrawl
No! on the title page of the book
that pays you royalties, even if
a poet’s payment is never royal
enough. The act of pen scratching
against page, your magic scribble,
what she wanted to see
even if she couldn’t read it,
didn’t want to, you know, sell it
on ebay as anything recognizable
by you. A mark blossoming ink
into the story she would tell her son
when she took the feather-paged,
broken-backed book down
forty years later, fingering a line
you once conceived. Being eleven,
her son was still young enough
then, to believe in the infallibility
of heroes. The type, she said,
was only a bit of postmodern retrofit
to the synapse blip of a poet’s brain,
but this, this handwritten scrawl
on the title page, this sprawling
human urge to reject, this illegible no
was written by the great Seamus Heaney, a poet
who remembered what it was
to believe in men larger than life.

ii. Galway
It is almost a pissing shame,
what you forgot to say
when you read your poem-
in-progress. Sometimes the nose
leads one astray, eh? Bad rhymes
in your name, almost
a pissing shame. I, new poet
on the block, forgot
how undivided attention
to the lure of a line
will make others attest
that writers (I am too
often with my pages, too.)
let the written word usurp
connections of the human kind.
I apologize for my intrusion.
I intended only a moment
for you to sign.

iii. Paul
Yes, definitely. Yes.
It is a pissing shame. If only
you had read something,
anything,
after you pitched us to run fetch
books from the Labyrinth with our
hard-earned cash and 15% discount,
well-trained Labradors returning
with slobbery balls and lolling tongues.
I could have bought your book too,
or maybe, I mean, I could have
chosen something else, say, tickets
to a Mariners game to watch
J.J. Putz shut out another batter,
or skipped poetry altogether,
changed my flight to Vegas
knowing if I turned up two kings,
I should bet it all
on a three-of-a-kind.



*to sign books.
Princeton Poetry Festival. Princeton, NJ. April 27, 2009.

Nassau on the Horizon

She lulls you asleep with her rocking
like your mama, like your yoo-hoo,
baby, sweetheart, honey-love girl.
She creaks like old wood
drying in summer heat,
groans and shudders
under your weight.
Her highs and lows
serve every whim.
Each thank you
returns her silky
"My pleasure."

Huffing and Puffing

Three
young ladies
huffing hairspray
stuck to boys pressing
arms around their shoulders
offering maximum hold protection.
Girls’ minds blown on aerosol
can’t see all the boys want
is a temporary hold
against feminine
skin; judgment
lost in three
lacquered
brains.



"Huffing and Puffing" originally appeared in Green Monsters on Red Moons.

Run, Girl
for Nissa

The wind at your back
cheers your momentum.
Spectators pack the trail,
ready lips suck cold air,
legs pumping long strides,
hair blowing back except
for the part in back
that lags straight up
like some hep-cat
in Louisiana. You,
the blond, blue-eyed
child who came to us at
three wishing you could run
wild with the mommy who wouldn't be one.
You're all legs at fourteen, but she eludes you
still. The surrogates you chase in her place
naughty-haired, white-smiling boys
with four-packs hold intentions
other than motherly.

Breathe, girl.
Work your hard, lean muscles.
Toss your hep-cat head
like the mule you've become
packing love for those
who never claim it.

Run, girl.
Your origins
mere competitors
and you blowing by.



A prior version of "Run, Girl" first appeared in Poetic Voices.

Some Toads Are Messengers

I bade him tell you
Hurugh. Hurugh.

Roughly translated
from Bullfrog, which is all
he knows, it means:

Come, I am eager
to share flies.

tasting

imagine grape
firm and yielding
crushing the essence
fruit into wine

imagine merlot
rich and compliant
succulent juice
alive on the palate

imagine lips
savoring harvest
robust delight
flesh upon tongue

Mother’s Last Dance
for Del

You make it easy to suffer the loss
of importance in the world,
show films of our true selves
as you dangle just out of reach.

When others come running, touched
faces disconsolate, the ice burst
settled in your skin,
I become the burnished sun
you rest against. Their breath

writes slow notes
in your periphery. They stand
bedside, hoping
to apprehend the music you are
dreaming; they cannot stand
you living in previous time.

You remain in the now
this very moment, close
to death: Its softness.
Its gentle gift good night.

regret

hearts cloaked
after years of lying
spooned naked

Scent of a Place She Did Not Want to Go
for Michelle

The brand new Ford Escort I rented
to drive her to Seattle, Washington.

Seattle, Washington, the restaurant
at Pikes Place Market, fish scales

and oysters on the half shell, slipped
down her throat, scent enough to gag.

Queasy at the top of the Space Needle,
she didn’t want to talk about it

or get back in the Escort to return
to the Bayshore Inn. She wanted

to run, wanted only to run,
not away, she said, but to.

To what? I asked. She threw her
perfumed hair back and laughed

bull-headed, as I packed her bags.
I thought a long hike in the Cascades

with Outward Bound could free her
from the spiked stakes

picadores plunged in her
while she was still a child. I thought

she would heal in the scent of earth
mulch and cedar boughs, could learn

to bend away from fatal thrusts.
She called the second day, wanting

to talk about the rental car.
She hated it, she said,

it reminded her of moving
from one foster home to another

with nothing to stake her future on,
just the smell of the State car

and a garbage bag of belongings
to accompany her. The place

at the top of the Space Needle
was too cramped, she said, men

leaned against her. She could smell
booze coming through their pores,

stale tobacco, dried cum on their
skin. It made hers crawl.

Her arms and legs tried to follow
some dozen years later, after

the odor of industrial ammonia
in Rosemont Girls Home,

after the smell of her own
breath, chalky from medications

they made her take, after her
daughter was born, her tears

and sweat as her body tore
open. She could smell her own blood

and urine, the antiseptic, and
baby Karissa’s damp curls

coming out of the place where
hers had been shorn. Even

the soft smell of the baby’s head
after her first bath, the warm milk

letting down, didn’t clear
the scents she carried with her

from childhood: adult men
pressing against her bare skin.

First lilac, now horseshit, now
stale beer, now Lemon Pledge,

the series of homes she moved through,
pressed to be Christian,

Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness,
till she didn’t know what to believe

except what she had been taught
to play, the skin flute; and take,

methamphetamines; to dull senses
she wanted to forget, and they did

too, dull them, on the day her car
left the road at a slight curve

plunging down an embankment, where
she lay trapped in the stench of her own

shit, ribbons of handprints
blossoming into a blood-red cape,

la plaza de toros final.

Makes as Much Sense as Anything Else

the zoo fell on all the keepers’ toes
until they were unlate and sorely bent
with grins as stark as blue monkeys
puffing up hills of Indonesian ink
they could not even find their patchouli oil
to keep fleas off butterfly wings

one of the wise-cracking eggs
(spoiled for lack of vegetation)
decided Pilatus Porter should be mayor
of Portland because he knew
all about wiring buildings
and dethroning frocks

Citibank went sideways
babies stopped crying
the state of Oregon fell into a huge
crevasse, a serendipitous hole
made of mint-flavored Lifesavers
that had been crushed and re-cemented
in a scheme to save the self-esteem
of all those apes
who never even bothered to vote.

Penmanship

When I see your words online,
posted moments before mine,
I’m back in third grade,
Bradley Burns
brushing up against me
in the coat room.

When I see your name
almost touching
mine, I’m learning cursive,
delighted
how my body curves
around the pencil.

Dr. M

The distance between crazy
and sane is the space between
your thumb and finger. You bewitch
the brain, first with your dark
eyes, then with potions to beguile
the mind. You ask them to place
the whisper of their breath
in your palms, entrust the journey
under knife to your care, though
they don't know you well
enough to share a cup of coffee
or an evening meal. You send them
off to wake up hard and hurting,
or soft and scratching (or sometimes,
not at all) and for this they pay
a king's ransom, itemized
Services— Anesthesia.

Pileated Takes a Moment to Reflect

Worry herself, that's what she does.
Tapping the top of the barbecue
lid, hoping it will open, hoping
there are bits of flesh
worth carrying
back to the hollow nest
where dependents
wait

wait

wait—
Shouldn’t she be
looking somewhere else
for what she needs? She won’t
find it there in the steel case
of charred remains.
Isn’t it true,
she could
tap

tap

tap
all day, nothing
would come of it.

shouldn’t she be pecking
at some earthy tomb?
Shouldn’t she
be grubbing around?
Why couldn’t she

be soaring,
showing off her red cap
like the scarlet letter she wishes
it would become.

Shouldn’t she stop staring in windows
that can never be forests?

Pileated Woodpecker Is Not on the List
Tap, tap, tap-tap-tap.

Despite loud ringing
calls, and persistent rapping,
she doesn’t get in.

Paying Respect to the Street Pole at the Corner
of Columbia and North Beach, San Francisco

You ten-hut all night, upright
as some far-right Republican, never
wavering your position; not in the not-slight
wind nor the sway of passing tourists
pausing to mill about your platform
like revolutionaries caught in a rifle mark.
You defend your corner like
a steadfast soldier, never mind
which bad ass, business class, no-name
nobody walks by, not thinking
to thank you
for your ever-ready light.

i dare you

boy
you buggin my cool
bite your crazy ego out blind
hang your naked rage and cry
courage ain't enough to fly
dance your reckless blame loose
let the past
go by

"i dare you" first appeared in Green Monsters on Red Moons.

Man, Not So Different Than His Fowl Friends

A life beset with conflict lies
just beyond the sash. Eyes give rise
to a regnant Canada Goose
and mate, whose fierce attacks induce
ducks to vacate what geese surmise

is prime real estate. They devise
tactics to wreck homes; emphasize
their might as right to reproduce
a life beset

by weaker species compromise.
Slight lends no real consensus; size
determines nature’s means of use,
strength brokered as a flag of truce,
feathered to decriminalize
a life beset.

The Sad Truth About What Comes Next
In remembrance of Sandra Cantu

you can’t remedy it
you can’t remedy it
you can’t remedy the way a child skips

into the hands of it
into the hands of it
into the hands of one who creeps

in the shadow of it
in the shadow of it
in the shadow of what we cannot say

saying the dark of it
saying the dark of it
saying the dark of it cannot remedy it

you cannot remedy it
you cannot remedy it
she is gone

birth day

she slapped
the baby
to welcome him
to the world

The Farrier

She was fifteen; you, thirty-two.
I wonder, did she blossom
in your hands?

Some men don't understand flowers
bloom best unforced.
You wouldn't. You never

let your colts run barefoot,
preferred to shape red-hot iron
to your own specifications.

You knew how to use a twitch
to make a filly stand quiet,
quiver with anticipation

at an opening gate, or prance
under light fingers
plucking reins.

It wasn't her time
to flower. Spring came
early that year.

Hidden Cost
for the mill rats at Smurfit

Thick concrete floors conceal a dozen men
with muscle memory fine as rats
dragging conduit through knee-deep chemical waste
in the semi-darkness. Clumps of putrid pulp
lie submerged along an encrusted creek.
The E.P.A.
OSHA
Erin Brockovich—

nobody sees this
except the men who skitter four tens
each week, so your correspondence
can be printed on pristine paper
92-bright.

Anniversary

Last year at precisely three p.m.
on this date my father expired
like a parking meter
without a gasp or wheeze
just tick, tick...
stop.

I can't believe a man who could fell
trees big as mountains, fly airplanes,
shoot bear, beat his own son
without a second thought
just whip, whip...
died.

ending

Remember me like this, always
lured by the glimmer of minutiae.

Crashing waves batter
gold bits into worn pebbles

tossed by the tide, silver
stones shimmer in Aphrodite’s

darkening foam. Wind-battered gulls
stand in crowded klatches, beaks

clamped tight as empty purses. I lean
into the wind, concoct entire futures

in the moment it takes to scoop
a clutch of sand, a feather. Undeterred

by their mocking gaze, I dip
a quill in the sea, write my own

Missed Connection

What diety designs a track so stark
that soul escapes before the engine makes
its stop? What lot permits such heartless lark
to rake the poise of one whose faith now shakes
her stunned and pulsing heart? Through acrid smoke,
be-dulled and sooty black, entrails of hope
betray her trembling lips. Lost tongue invokes
his name before the pregnant cornucopia
of dreams upon the tracks reproach
in futile sparks each dimmer than the last.
He slipped away so softly from the coach
she did not see him go, but now bemoans,
no god exists. She disembarks alone.

Atonement

the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each
separate individual…it is the ensemble. -Karl Marx

i.
From a distance one does not exist
except as part of the gray
meld where sea, sucking and spitting
claims shore. Woman wanders
the edge—its relentless pressing
and receding
transfixed by the power
of at-onement.
Awed
cowered
she posits proof of
her own essential
Oneness
lifting a single stone
from the sand.


Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
thinking, feeling, desiring, acting, loving…
are…the appropriations of human reality. -Karl Marx

ii.
Stone is never as simple as it feels
in the hand. Each historical epoch
captured existence in it’s own finite form
without consideration for outcome.
Some rocks dazzle.
Some cut.
Some lie
dull and brittle against the living
created when nature knew only itself—
and other existed purely
as predator or prey.
No man watched the first rocks form
neither heard the shrieks
nor smelled the flesh
condemned to steaming wells
of black tar.

Mankind.
Womankind.

They came.
They sensed.
They named It
and each other.
They arrived malleable
in the hand.
But whose?

They will tell you
Eden exists not in the bold face
of one who dares to stir your soul
ablaze against the licking flames
of complacency
but in the congratulatory gold watch
and the security of knowing
checks continue
even after you stop
caring about what you do
who you are
what you dreamt
you’d be.
If hell is the deep black abyss
promised to those who plummet from the grace
of conformity, purgatory must be the slippery slope
of mind wrestling heart’s despair
for those who fail to be transformed.


Alienation is…the equivalent of sin. -Karl Marx

iii.
Illegitimi Non Carborundum.
They will devour everything—
a parade of tired and desperate people
who give minute after consuming minute
to garner mantels of existence
that demand desecration of their own
spirit in the interest of community,
subjugate soul until introspection and thought
have been suppressed long enough to placate
everyone.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.
Walk and talk and breed essence
the way one bright bit of broken glass
churns in the surf to be cast upon shore
then draws the eye in defiance
of where one and all coalesce.

The dark sea batters.
It is hard to brave depth
for the glimmer of such tiny light
in lost and broken bits.
You may choose to batten down the hatches,
weather the storm, but there is no safe harbor
in alienation—
home
work
church
state
all eager to yoke you.

In time, the weight of their need
will force you to lean so close to the ground
they need only clear the debris
in that very spot—
and clergy to offer forgiveness
for your sin—
before tucking you back
into earth’s sodden fold.


We become aware of the void as we fill it. -Antonio Porchia

iv.
Open your hands. Pluck this pebble
from my eye. Tears flow
with its departure; they cannot
erode the gift now proffered.

I challenge you with phantoms
charaded as action; ideas expressed
in electronic blips and ink scrawl
because I am afraid to do
something that might become what we are not.
I fear this fraud has been complicit
in your alienation.


I have lost my way of being
who I am if we are not
sometimes together
where eyes are portal to soul.
I refuse to be the thread
that binds you, even loosely
to an existence that fails to transcend.
So I wander the uncertain edge
of my own seeking, wondering
if the only atonement is solitude,
if ensembles exist at all.

The Poem She Found in He Who Searches Is a Bitter Pill

Sometimes one lives
with a woman a thousand years
and yet—
that woman never
understands you.

At times one allows
an unknown woman
to absorb the best of oneself
and this unknown woman
suddenly intuits everything

guesses everything—
and one is naked in her eyes
even though one has only
unbuttoned one’s pants
a little

as if, absent
-mindedly. It’s not easy
to know who one is, and if
he is—
and it’s still less easy

to complete others by trying
to incorporate them.
There is a time for everyone
to tremble—
a time of changing skin.

I am tired
of making myself plural.
In other words
here I am
with little courage

to be here—
to forget one’s own desires,
to take refuge in the life
traumas of another person.
Rebirth?

No.
No rebirth.

All men are alike—
they don’t hold up.

And women?
They’re all equal-
ly hermetic
and outrageous.




The novel "He Who Searches" was written by Luisa Valenzuela.

bearing time

slogging through mud in hip boots
baby takes time, the crush of flesh
against flesh, nurse clucking at his resistance
to the pulsing insistence of vaginal walls
and the cold bright world he will meet
when his face breeches her hips
and tired flesh ejects him

it grows at night when no one watches,
slips from your head, micro by micro
revealing shades of red and blond,
each new shaft in morning light
displays a millimeter of shine
so incremental no one comments
oh my, your hair is longer

at the dmv, latitudes and longitudes,
arrows on signs, doors and desks
point and lead and direct and insist
this way and that way and over yonder
till you have passed the same redhead worker
three times in one afternoon and
still not renewed your license

thick like family secrets or ketchup
dried on the dashboard, your words
slow-poured, and me savoring
a fresh sense of heart
check my email one two three
times daily, but words come
in their own time, when you press send

Lake Maiden

Water ripples along mud shoulders
where ice binds two small islands into glistening
nipples. Her marshy bottom fills with cast-off shells
shaped in an unseen mosaic. Rain melodies
dance in divots—winter’s frenzy
whips dirty lace along her saw-grass hem
where toads sink deep in her fertile belly
for a long sleep. The mystery is always
whether this is the last season or whether,
when winter passes, she will press her toes
against the far shore, arch her back,
deliver tadpoles, ducklings, spring.

Unsent Letter To the Man Who Raped and Killed Her
for Jessica

Had I lain panting while you bloodied your way
into the world, I would easily forget your trespass
as you latched to nipple and nursed at swollen breasts.
Impossible to fathom what wrenched your baby fingers
into these callous hands; which wretched moment
fused your heart and head into conspirators of horror.
Easily forgotten, the violence wrought upon vagina
when you come as babies do. Incomprehensible,
your replication of that destruction as a grown man.
How could you bestow such rage on any child?

Easy to Miss the Symbiotic Dance

His bark is tough
enough to withstand wind,
though it may succumb
to boring insects
and water creeping in.

Her reputation is invasive
as she creeps
up the stalwart trunk,
expanding her green reach
toward his welcoming limbs.

Ivy penetrates fir in ragged
notches,each protecting other
in what some perceive a strangle-
hold. Others call it love.

Years Blow By

Monday, poolside, pre-dawn,
2003. Broken straps of the pool chair
slap the deck beneath me. Engines rumble,
lugging Mercury across rough sea.
Wind shears the surface of the pool
spraying the fiery-eyed Cyclops
curled in the palm of each early riser.
I scan for evidence of the sun
rising, find only miles of dark sea.
Wind lashes my hair in strands of
torn sails. Smoke wafts toward

Saturday morning, early,
a Chevy pick-up, 1969. Jimmy and I
curled in sleeping bags and old coats,
slam against the steel bed of the truck
as dad rumbles along Weyerhauser roads
spotting for buck to feed us through winter.
I scan for signs we are headed home,
find only a sea of evergreens
cut in wide swaths by perilous gravel roads.
Dad sucks Benson-Hedges, flicks his ash
out the window. Jimmy and I
hunker down for the long haul.

April is National Poety Month

so i am taking part in a challenge to post a poem every day. To see how I live up to that challenge, stay tuned.

To read more about Saenz' work:
Benjamin Alire Saenz

Grave Stone

A bowl of rocks, a bird of stone.
Gray granite heavy and flightless
like the flies whose wings my brother pulled
before singeing them black with sun-
light shone through glass.
When you look close, things burn.

Rock forms to fingers for digging
or killing: stones won't tell.
A half-rock the size of a chicken
heart heavy in the hand.
I picked it up in Dachau: a token
dark as blood.

M & M Poem

Pot Watchers
for Nils

women watch
pots mirror
vessels yield
lush light

How to Do Friendship

Build a fire and let it heat
the room. Invite one you must know
inside. Walk loose, limbs dangling
like limp piccolos with nothing to do
but whistle the tune that you, wise child,
once knew by heart. Sing
flames that singe and wither.
Be unafraid of intensity—glow
little ember, flicker and grow.
Give yourself space to be fierce
and thunderous. Be dark as you must.

Stomp.

Storm.

Splash in murky puddles.
Listen to the hiss of water
tossed on lost dreams, blackened
edges where others fail to consume your offering.

Stand tall, shake the ash from your wings.
Fold shoulders back until blades clash
like swords slicing at armor you wore
to protect heart: its seeds, its hulls.
The charred remains help separate destiny
from twirling whimsy. Breathe soft
and slow. The embers of every blaze
you have endured and every torch
you will ever light smolders within.

Strike your eyes in hers.

Burn.

Two Girls 4 and 6 Twirling in the Park

I stood under the hundred year oak
watching little girl bodies intersect
at the belly where one lay across the other
at right angles on the doughnut-shaped swing
and a young man—clearly not their father—
spun them round and round.

I got dizzy watching
in the warm afternoon wind,
worried what to say, not knowing
any of them-- just gaping
like some voyeur, sordid and obsessed
with the relentless need

to stare and the nudge of something
in my gut. Maybe it was
how his hands moved so quickly
to spin them; the little one's cries
rising in near delirium, clamoring
for him to stop while he kept on

twirling them round
and round and round
on the city park's Big O
tire swing until they melted
into tender, mewing kittens
willing to be held.


"Two Girls 4 and 6 Twirling in the Park" first appeared in Green Monsters on Red Moons.

You Do Not (de-doo-dop)
Need Her

Go ahead, resist her
de-doo-dop
incandescent lines and taunting
sensibilities. Each awkward angle
relinquishes proportion, tempts
distortion where she dangles
in your periphery. Cage your
dismissal. Pretend
she is invisible when the breeze
ripples and your tie loosens
chokehold, it is not
de-doo-dop
her
and when the wind messes
your silver tresses capped closed
you can bet she’s not-got wicked fingers
tangled there and her tongue isn’t
slipping lobe to lobe, circumnavigating
the northern hemisphere
of the globe you so-tried
to fence from view.

You can lock it up
chalk it up or blame
it on the arrogant wild-eyed
minx who refused to cop a trade for someday
antics and cheap trinkets. She wants
it, flaunts it; the thrilling filling haunting
every single solitary pulsing
molecule— each cell
swirling, twirling
reflections multiplied and divided
in dazzling
de-doo—dop
dance of your prancing
duality. Take her
face in cupped palms,
succumb to breasts pressed
close against the child-shamed chest
float
sink
swim
in the essence you struggle
to repress. Go ahead,
resist—

You don’t really want her
to be your
de-doo-dop
mirror anyway.

Do you?

Calculated Response
for Gary Stogsdill

What first irked Frege about calculation
described as aggregative mechanical thought
is that such conjecture is wasteful,
fraught with temptation toward hasty admiration
for what we think we know we know.

Do laws exist to suit the objects
about which they are thought? Mechanical speech,
he might assert, is about as thoughtful
as a parrot whistling a skirt. Calculation
equals aggregative mechanical thought?
Gottlob Frege: Definitely not.

Skipping Stones

A rock will call you, its color catching your eye,
the weight or shape offering rightness in your hand
as you bow to pluck it from its settled place.
Texture, smooth or rough,
forms against you in an act of solidarity.

A word will strike you, the rhythm, or syntax
from tongue to ear, or pen to eye, as familiar
as old friends who know one another's cadence.
The context reveals the connection
between intimate and unfeeling
in its familiar molecular docking.

Pebbles jingle in pockets and words in minds.
Pick a stone that fits your palm well. Carry it
in your pocket like champion marbles; hard-won
against pocked cat's eyes and battered steelies.
Skip a word across smooth water.
Notice how many times it taps the surface
as it carries you, the way it pulses like a metronome
to keep time with your clamoring heart.

surviving extremes


should not (i know) venture here
and yet (rovers must be prepared)

i streak across time and space
(for the unexpected) encounter

(nature is) what i feel
(an arbitrary teacher)

(to prevent hypothermia) your skin
screams (strip naked) touch me

across the space (find a protected area)
where minds drift (and lie close together)

a dangerous course (to maintain integrity
of the body) permit (and ensure) hands

head and heart (sustained
warmth) unfettered flight.

Mouthwatering


She dances
like rain falling.

He drops his umbrella
and catches her
on his tongue.

"Mouthwatering" first appeared in Erotic Readers Association in 2004.

Challenging Gottlob Frege's Notion of One

…if we were to say 'a means a number,' this would be open to the same objection as the definition 'one is a thing.'… a does not mean some one definite number which can be specified…With one, however, the position is essentially different.

The problem with ‘it takes a village’
is that it did not take one to create a child,
and while one benefits from positive factors
in the family, the exponential is not true
in the personal: a mother is not the same
as the mother, as the one mother
one had when one first had a mother.
(One mother plus a mother) minus one mother
does not equal the mother.

Any child can do this math.

Brazen Crow at Rosario

on the white white plank
a black crow waits
his cloud aura
puffed up proud
against blue blue sky

a black crow walks
the plank
chattering at sailboats
trying to fly

black crow you caw so
much mess
cook frightens you off