bike seat

two coils
support the full weight of
the bouncing, the bumping
forward motion
air, mist
burnt oil and bridal veil
sweet sour, hour by hour
devour despite the grit
sweat, spit
two liquids, expelled
reviled, self-made
required for stasis

When I am not simple air

When I am not simple air but
buzzing, droplets
collude in my chest, form a cloud
like ten parents preparing for a school board meeting
who have something to yell about when they get there
but are now sitting around a kitchen table
ten times too small.
Scraping at my ribcage with the frightened paws of ten tinygiant panicking hearts.
Gaping into a hole
ten times the size of my mouth,
filling slowly with snow that will melt.
If my hand worked like a Caterpillar's claw
I would excavate each one
and wrap it in burlap
and over the edge of the bridge
one, two, three
four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten.
Instead
my mouth
collects them and masticates, tearing
until they are confetti, waiting to be
exhaled.

publishing work 7/4/12

I tend to chide, a bookworm
whose erstwhile paradigm of love
is ever conditionally tensed.
If we were to, we would. Should we this, we that.
But did I stutter when I said I love you best?
Did the heart in your beat skip a chest?
Oh, dear.
If I were to attain perfection, I would ascend
into clouds of hubris so intense and vile
they choke out air.
And should I gather up the courage to take your hand as myself, hiding nothing, I would be
only myself.

Truth embodies the conditional endophytically, then vaporizes fear with its infrared beam.
The vestigial mist mildews the pages of our love, adding spots
so we remember which section was open that day
when we review for future generations where adventures began and plots thickened.

an exercise in iambic pentameter: mistaken identity 10/21/11

On a walk with Zoe in the fall

casting toward the river and the Plant,

She -- pulling, snuffling, loping, searching, gay --

I, strung out on the twilight of the day.

Round the bend, a woman held a leash;

looking west, her coat an engine-re.

Too eager for the winter chill, I felt,

with glorious, golden autumn dusk ahead.

Distracted for a moment by the dog,

I suddenly looked up again to find

the woman gone, and standing in her place

a fire hydrant on a piping base.

I laughed that I could make such a mistake!

But truly, the resemblance in the dusk

uncanny, and I swear I saw her face

expectant to the west, as for a dog.

     In the first moment I lost you

     A jarring recognition, seeing true

     The presence I thought waited there and breathed

     Was just a hole, covering a need.

writing about vista: part 3

(These installments were written during my second year as an Americorps VISTA volunteer & family involvement coordinator at an elementary school. Results may vary.)

6/16/11

shining skin

cheeks damp with tears that trace years down young faces

sun glints on windows under sad smiles and hands waving fiercely

furrowed brows, squinting lashes hold floods back tenuously

some proud, for the first time, to look on each other with unadulterated joy

a physical barrier grows up between those on the bus moving away

from books and bar graphs and behavior slips, beyond the fence,

out in the open now. Vulnerable

to the sun, to each other’s eyes, to the pulling

the pain of a three-month separation visible on each face

the taste of electric current, the connecting cord so taught and tangible that it buzzes

broken suddenly when the last bus disappears around the corner.

A catharsis of applause breaks the spell, and finally they can turn back

to the building, left in ruins, to heal, to steel their hearts for the boomerang.

i’m terrible at analysis.

i forget to differentiate means and ends.

i don’t set smart goals.

i don’t deal in measurable results.

i don’t feel in a way that shows yearly progress

but my feelings progress; my heart is full to bursting

and the task at hand feels insurmountable: release responsibility.

i cannot drop the weight, i cannot let go from a hug that has the power to suffocate.

what will they do next year? where will i go?

i cannot leave them.

it’s not about me, luckily. things aren’t fine, but they have the possibility to be better.

if my time here left them one thing, i hope it was to help paint one day new, with a sky where the sun is coming up.

writing about vista: part 2

(These installments were written during my second year as an Americorps VISTA volunteer & family involvement coordinator at an elementary school. Results may vary.)

 4/11/11

The gaggle congregates in the school library each Saturday morning. They trickle in, some as early as 7am (long before the doors open), some running up the walkway at 10:30 (with traces of sleep still crusted to their faces). They sign the sign-in sheet under “Student,” write their names on pilfered mail merge labels. A flurry of jackets tossed toward the couches becomes a rainbowed patchwork mountain.

They’ve almost always had breakfast already, but they always want to eat again: soggy, salty hashbrown triangles, four or five packets of jelly squeezed onto flat biscuits, still warm from the close quarters of their bursting paper bag. Ronald smiles out from the labels on the little bottles of milk. In our common language, smiles mean strength; breakfast means caring; focus means resiliency; laughter means comfort; mutual respect means adoration.

Sitting quietly or not at the substantial tables and chairs, they know the drill: folder, pencil, papers, tutor. It’s Math Time. Simple answers hide just behind flashcards, but more difficult facts are embedded deep in paragraphs to be extracted. They mine the minds of their elders, in search of bigger armaments for their tool belts. There’s no ruler to measure the gifts of the givers, no equation to quantify their effect. Except, perhaps, the intangible luminosity of a light bulb radiating above a head newly filled with incendiary combinations: knowledge, tenacity, self-esteem, endurance, passion, hope.

They say and do everything they can to be noticed, chosen, remembered. They say and do everything they can to get it right, to be good. They fall into the routine of agreement on their academic philosophies, their small promises not to surrender. Knights in shining armor aside, those in the room cooperate in fortifying the ramparts, making them strong enough to hold when tested. Together, they fashion shields that cannot be pierced by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. In their quest for what is nobler, may they need no sleep to dream.

They gobble it all up. They put their heads together and dare to try. They grab our hands and pull us to the gym when it’s time to play. Each weekday, they pull on my clothes and knock on my door and call my name, 

Miss Julia! 

Will you be there on Saturday?

 

writing about vista: part 1

(These installments were written during my second year as an Americorps VISTA volunteer & family involvement coordinator at an elementary school. Results may vary.)

 1/27/11

i. on telling a story

my good intent: like best-laid plans

it tends to go awry

it follows no predetermined path

it follows instinct

a water strider making ripples on the surface of portent

scared into the middle by what’s brewing on the shore

its shadow warning living things below of the menace’s arrival

my steps issuing concentric circular signals

a beacon forming, illuminating fire doors

but i didn’t do it on purpose. i followed my instinct.

my subconscious a thick web of societal trust

my heart singing the story they taught me was worth telling

i was given feet that float long ago and expect thus

my courage dependent on silk woven to hold

ii. on service

you are not special. you are not one of them.

they are not yours to fix to help to make better to change

you are not the one who has the answers they need

you are not the one who has the money or the influence it takes

someone told you to be the change, it changed you

but you will not save the world today.

iii. on greatness

our great people say americans are special because we dare to dream

but i think we’re just fortunate enough to see dreams realized all around us

and brave(crazed) enough despite it all to say, “why not me?”

i didn’t learn that from a book, or a leader, or from history

i learned it at the north end elementary science fair.

a child who doesn’t know where she’ll sleep tonight

tells me she’s going to save the world

and i believe her, so

i begin again to dream of a world worth saving

it’s my job to help make it before she puts her cape on