clean ball player

We are watching women's basketball

Women's sports are better, we agree.

It still has the heart of long, long ago.

We are watching Caitlin Clark go

"She's a clean ball player." I agree.

I don't what it means but I know it is true.

Like how I do not know how to read lips

But I can see when someone says my name

the shape and form and breath of my name.

What would my name look like

moving through Iowan lips?

I imagine it is tapered and sharp 

We can watch this, captivated,

My pits still smell of the dirt 

                                   and sweat

from tilling the earth this morning

I marvel on the arms 

                   and force,

dribble, dribble, dribble,

of the hose outside,

     birdbath cleaned,

     biscuit and gravy lunch,

     and smocks I ordered 

     from a paper catalog,

hand still covered in ink I smeared as I wrote.

RJ Cummings and Company

First time with a boy, BET was loud on the t.v. and I vomited. I told him it was the wine. We didn't try again to find out. First time with a girl, it was church quiet. I told myself it was the gin. I didn't try again to find out.

catlessons

    Here are the lessons I've learned from the cats. House cats. They domesticated themselves. Were wild, outside, saw the good deal dogs were getting and pushed open the doors to our homes with their paws and big wide eyes. Just walked in like they lived there and owned a piece. We bowed down to their demands. Found in a sewer, found by a dumpster, found behind a Taco Bell, no matter their origin, upon entering the home they command. They are queens and kings demanding their dues. Worship me. Feed me. Give me your time. Every stray is a show cat, yet somehow less docile.

    Don't settle. Demand what they want when they want it. Touched when they want touched. Not touched when they don't want touched. Bite the hand that feeds you. There are plenty more hands ready to feed me. I don't even need fed. I could hunt. But I'd rather not. Lay in the sun. Sunbath. Blink your eyes slowly. Peer up. What is anxiety? When there are birds which fly outside the window and flowers which sway in the wind?  What is depression? When string curls and moves with captivating glory? What is eating disorder? When nothing feels better than to eat yourself sick? 

    We can charm and tame large creatures to clean it up. Large creatures to grovel and beg for a flip of our tail and a brief rub against leg. Don't be eager. Aloof. Aloof floof. Let them question their reality; their worth. Don't get trained. Don't do tricks. Don't let them know you like them. Power is in their nerves. Shhh....I'm sleeping. I'm napping today and tomorrow. I am high up on the shelf, cry for me to come down. Cry for me. Cry your eyes out. Scream my name. Get mad. 

    Call the firefighters to rescue me from the tree, this I climbed up and could get down. I don't want to. Save me from myself so you can fancy yourself a hero, when I was just daydreaming in branches with the birds I would hunt if I wasn't so fat from your food. Lose yourself in us. Gloat if I choose you. I am licking my paws. I am chewing on my toes. I am cleaning my face. I am watching you scoop up my shit. Cause you like it that way.

    Pat your leg and whisper my name over and over. Stroke my fur till, I tire and nip at your arm. Love the scratches on your arms. I attack. Love my attacks. I am fighting for my life to stay a touch wild. You are fighting for your life to get my attention as I walk away. Strut away. Another room; another world. I flick an ear towards the door. I am big eyed. I am big clawed. I am here by choice. Don't ever forget it. 

    Feel crazy, yet, love? Feel crazy cat lady, yet? You are on the floor, tapping with a single finger, peering under the bed. I am firm in stance beneath. We can lay like this for hours. Hours. I have all the time in the world. I will nap today and I will nap tomorrow. I will sniff you in your sleep. I will walk across your body. I will hide and climb and run and tease. I can run to the neighbor tomorrow, so you better give me what I want today. 

    I am the cat I am. And you are the compassionate sensitive sucker you are. If you don't like me as I am, I will move on. But you will like me. You will love me. You will bow down and want to kiss my triangle ears and jelly bean toes. But I stay just a finger-length away. Till it's my time and my choice, to rub my head on your hand.

    See you tracking the prints in the snow. You seeking me now.

my best poems are written in the shower (the secret meaning of flowers in history)

       The Consumption men do not know

only women really know

   To consume and be consumed

        by the world around you.

Fuck like bunnies do to make baby bunnies

  and a home among the brambles

       experience the world through and in 

   another rabbit.

Furious soft fur in a field while hawks watch.

       Wanton abandon; Death begets beauty.

Women know only children and wild dogs matter,

        also birthing babies and licking up.

             A thumb in the mouth is a truth,

             is a baton twirling in space and time.

Every flower a descendant

     of a flower my ancestors plucked.

Please hold my hand when you graze 

      the sprouting meadows

  grab me up by the scruff of my neck

           Do not worry if I cry-

     It's letting go the papercut longing

                                   I've held too long.

Wrap me up in ivy so I can't run away if I get scared.

          Hurry up, children!

Those not born in beds or on gurneys

        But born in thickets of weeds

        with seeds dried to our foreheads.

I'll kiss your seeded forehead, 

    bloom between my lips.

I am a Victorian; You are Queen Victoria.

All that I know was paved by your vision

                    You are my time! You are my culture!

        I can only be described through adjectives of you.

We are in the fields and no one not even hawks

           could catch us up.

sorry how I am too eager for your time

How you say my name

               type my name 

like you and I are 

          strips of dough

cut from the same ball

       cut and split

       then woven

            lattice top

       to a pie

           secret recipe

              proprietary blend

sweet and sticky

             I sink right in.

good spring [human condition is not a disease]

 

with a green that cannot be tamed
        every tomato started a flower blossom
                        every fruit too

                                what about me?

no blueberry bush is traumatized
    just growing out
            of last year's hard season.

she blooms and doesn't dwell

        branches stretched to sun
how can i not burst forward in life?
            when that's all we ever had.
stop all the illness, stop all the disease,
                        life was for living.
seek my answers from the birds
                and the trees and the bees
    halt psycho-hubris, i am in the waters

don't pathologize all that i love.

                                it isn't sick. 

don't medicate my feelings

            don't medicate my hopes

    humanity lived too long without this, so
        modern, we are tasked to re-romance and re-discover
        all that always was before.
the body doesn't keep score
            cause earth life isn't a competitive game
    and winning is not the end
there are no goals and no scores and no rules
                just being in human being

    imagine there is not mind-body connection

        the brain not separate

the brain is the body as is blood

    as is the blossoms

                    which turn to fruit  

just as human is nature and our body is nature

            our mind is nature

    it is all as one so

find me in the grass and away from the past.

the shirt you gave me is compostable

Over 15 years ago,

      my 20th birthday,

   a gift,

           100% cotton.

                I still wear it a ton.

That's a difference;

        Between You and I.

   I find something;

            I keep something

        till it's worn out and raw.

Even then, press out it's juice,

    embedded, even tredded,

      drink it into my veins.

     Weave the molecules 

          throughout my cells

our fibers, our weft, our cleft,

till I am a car, with too many

      aftermarket parts

            only a vin number

  could set me apart.

new home.

Lay under the apple tree

        I'm tangled in roots

                tongue tied up

           please take a bite

      and pull me into dirt.

attrition.

Dreamt I peeled 

         the skin from my heel

   up to mid calf

     exposed muscle

chicken fat

     clingy to the bottom

   so I 

      pat the skin back down

 and open the door

    to greet my guests

        Sakura, Sakura.

sometimes the the thunder slows

      self-conscious of her voice.

Mobius strip

        my life

isn't absurd

    it's ironic

                   self-fulfilling prophecy

    a Mobius strip

the further I ran away

the sooner I run right into it all

      Again

          and again

Know it's coming, like a

a primetime formula

murder solved 

     always

          in the last 15 minutes

   but watch anyway.

hypocrit on a Pisces New Moon night

From the writing in my journal

      to the writing on my body

   with the writing on the wall

                -how now I say to myself

the ways humans lived 

             and should live

         and ought to live.

My expectations bags

      floating to the surface

      of this milk glass bath

      screen time, posey pink.

(my phone's battery is almost dead)

Not able to discipline myself

           the way 

    parents should their kids.

Cloudy is the word.

         -my head, the sky, this water

I choose to drown each time I pick it up

        lull me

    the modern cure, 

I want no more.

Piss in the bathtub

         just another daydream.

reclamation

I am in re-remembering

the past is not now, 

nor the future. 

What was,

What is, 

What will someday be,

so often just dandelion seeds

         floating in the wind stream.

            out past the window,

       past wild onions in the yard,

   past the fence which contains us,

           people are restless out there,

But it's none of our business

The Outside. That's Act and React.

I have to live today for a different tomorrow.

          for I am the restless people in our home.

planner

why dont you dolomite die 

on me now between these painted 

visions gators and florida water,

when im cleansing my swamp soul.

why dont you dare to die

on me right now when 

    i finally understand-

i was Bluebeard

in every story

i ever told

    he was i

        i was he

grazing gazelle

pour sand on my teeth

live on the grit

you die when i say

    check my five year plan.