Poet’s Introduction

 
I received the email from Unsolicited Press, an offer to publish my book Under the Tented Skin, about a week after I moved out of my then-house, and began upending my then-life. Maybe it was an omen, an augur. In the last two and half years, I’ve quit my tenured teaching job, left my relationship of more than twenty years, and moved to a town several hours away where I knew no one. A poet friend I had over for dinner told me I was living the “middle-aged lady’s dream.”

My dream looks like a small house where I go to bed by myself, where I cook by myself and for myself, where the walls and shelves are littered with art and oddities I’ve collected or been gifted: antique lace and calcified worms, dried seedpods, the fragile ribcage of a bird that died in an attic fan, a taxidermied hummingbird preserved in salt, a mosaic chicken, and so much art from the artists I work with every day in my new job as the executive director at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point. Shortly after I arrived I read bell hooks’s All About Love: New Visions and one part (of many!) that stuck with me was the idea of moving away from notions of love as a romantic dyad. Rather, build a community of love with people you care about and who care about you. Love is process and practice, ongoing action rather than words.

In the wake of November’s election, as we reel from executive order to executive order, as we try to balance engagement with needing space from the news, I’m trying to hold on to the idea of a community of love and how we can support each other. Maybe one way to do that—as poets—is to tell the truth. Maybe one way to do that—as people—is to tell the truth, including the hard work of telling the truth to ourselves. Although a number of the poems in my new book were written years ago, I think maybe they were the beginning of a reckoning with myself: things I’d resisted saying for a long long time.

250 word bio, preferably third-person

Offering can mean a thing presented or sacrificed “in worship or devotion,” “in tribute or as token of esteem.” My father gave me The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary because he didn’t know about rows of fabric-clad volumes full of citations. That’s what I wanted. All the possibilities of that verbal noun.

That’s what you think when you receive a Facebook message from a former teacher. When a person is chosen, complex feelings may accompany being chosen.

What it means to be a very smart girl, a girl who can go far—beyond where you are: which is why he takes such interest. Why he worries, years later, because he didn’t _____ you, that you might think yourself “unattractive” or “unworthy” or unlovable.

You’re told you’ve always been precocious. That at your first doctor’s appointment, you flirted with the doctor when he changed your diaper.

Each story presents a mirror of itself:

You dream about a species of hummingbird that flies very low to the ground; dies if looked at too long. You spend your days pointing it out, then begging people to look away.

When asked why you’re a poet, you answer instead why you’re a good eater:

there’s nothing I won’t try / I don’t throw the skins away / and I’ve been known to gnaw a bone.

Unkindness

Of all possible you’s, I’m most invested in Schrodinger’s You—
you and not you simultaneously, always and never.

One way to tell the story is to write
about when childhood ends—
what this means depends on positionality, point of view.
Address those who were to care for you, cocoon you

and either did or didn’t, who tried
and failed, or were complicit
in that undoing: which [you] would [you] write to?

You once told me every poet has a poem about a crow
but lately I’ve been thinking maybe it’s a raven—at a distance

it can be hard to tell the difference:
listen for a lower, throatier call,
and look at tail shape. I’ve been watching still living

things carried away in talons, twitching.
I thought crows only scavenged, but both species
predate eggs & nestlings, and ravens sometimes

take on larger things: rodents & other small mammals
—or mass together
to kill newborn livestock if they’re not moving much.

It could be either post-mortem scavenging
of a stillborn or opportunistic predation, but a flock of ravens
during calving season makes ranchers nervous. Two or more

ravens is called an Unkindness. If you’ve heard
the Eastern Cottontail meeting death
you know it sounds like a child—when darkness
smothers all sound, you sit upright in bed
thinking, “What now?”
wondering if it’s something you have to see to,
or if it can wait until morning. You wait ‘til morning.

Obituary for a Monster

Hate feeds a girl, but it can’t be the only thing
she eats. To understand, we need to expand
our definition of so many ideas—weigh immediate
aftermath against the following days, the next few months,
even the years that will make up what she calls her life.
Without flexibility, a jury may remain

forever deadlocked. Punching holes of darker night
in the sky, bats fly out. Their name
means “hand-wing” in Greek; at the tips of their span

are flexible bones we might call “fingers.”

In colonies, they hang upside down, huddled
side-by-side to expend as little energy as possible.
Flight an enormous cost—the super-heated body
with its paper doll skin carries, but is not consumed by,
things that kill us. At the end of their day,
beginning of ours, upside-down bones
webbed in the brown-grey, they fall prey
instead to White Nose Syndrome—spread cave
by cave, sleep by sleep.

From the area roped off for visitors
and media, cameras flash. Disinfect clothes
to prevent spread. We’ve moved
further and further into their territory.

When we lived in that cut-up house’s lower, joists
precarious on the crumbling basement’s dirt walls,
my job was the mice and you handled the bats.
I remember you in your boxer shorts, broom swinging wildly,
as the cat leapt four feet high for the careering visitor.
You connected and it crossed the room
to slap wetly against my face.

I woke up with this poem’s opening line in my head
the day after Weinstein was found guilty of two of five counts.
Each day, he arrived at the courthouse shambling,
stooped over a walker. Picture after picture after
picture of the now-old man looking harmless. See also:

the way a community of bats both protects and endangers;
the way their wing bones are both light and dense;
although delicate, tears in the wing repair quickly.

Bat echolocation is subtle enough to catch small insects
in near or total dark, but I’ve always been afraid, imagining
my hair a trap, and their tonal clicks a panic tantrum.
A bat caught out in the daylight looks so vulnerable, apart
from its others, webbed-wing skin translucent, and milk teeth
hidden, but the one time I tried to kill one, I couldn’t.

After that bat hit my face, I couldn’t shower long enough.

We revert to platitudes to distance ourselves
from the terrible thing. We know
what we are saying is insufficient & inadequate
but we cannot say anything else. What we mean is:
I’m so glad it wasn’t me. I’m so so glad it wasn’t me.

The Girl with No Hands

In stories like this, everything seems so simple at first. Behind the mill is behind the mill, although that’s the inciting event of course.

In stories like this, brutality is common and necessary for moving the plot forward. I do not mean the chopping off of hands or the continuing mentions of stumps. I mean how the father says “Help me in my need . . .” I mean the wife who must have looked on. The mother-in-law who butchered a doe for its tongue to pretend she’d killed the girl; who knew to lace the baby tight to the back of the girl so she could walk and walk and walk, as long as she might need.

In stories like this, some people can say “don’t touch me” and they’ll be heard—some people can say “back up” at close quarters and their particular boundaries are observed—but some people have to include “please” before those requests, soften their tones, because the mask hides their appeasing smiles.

In the story, the girl drew a circle around herself with chalk and the devil couldn’t touch her. Tears washing her clean.

In related stories, a girl may wake with no feeling in her hands. If it’s because she sleeps on her side, arms and hands curled fetal, there’s little to worry about. If the numbness persists—or her hands become useless—there may be something to worry about.

In the story, the girl’s hands grew back but she kept her love-made silver hands to prove who she was. She’d need to prove she was the girl bartered to the devil, married to a king, banished, but always pious, always good, never wanting vengeance.

If you have ever been a girl without hands, you may dread being touched—even by your beloved, your loved ones. It comes unbidden sometimes, back of your throat like a second tongue. If there is anything good about this time of enforced distance, it’s that sometimes saying “don’t touch me” will be heard.

One possible message of the tale: draw yourself a chalk circle to stay safe.

One possible message of the tale: once you start walking, don’t ever stop walking.

One possible message of the tale: when someone says “help me in my need,” be sure they articulate that “need”—when they say “forgive me of the evil I am going to do to you,” look for the shining blade.

Stories like this are overdetermined. In this instance, a richness. In other cases, this may be a confusion. There are so many people you cannot trust; there are so many people you can trust.

In related stories, girls subject to brutality after brutality rarely survive intact; chalk circles don’t last. Today’s girls-without-hands hide in passive voice—are found in second-person point-of-view.

In related stories, people can’t hold the line with their voices or their bodies, and are rarely able to survive without wanting vengeance. Hands don’t grow back, and the silver hands (love-made), that proof you once withstood whatever the world gave you, aren’t something you strap to your back and carry. They’re something you lay down and leave.

piecework

pasiphaë rocks her infant
…….on her lap like any mother.
hush, little minotaur,
you are no monster. sshh. no more
…….than any other child & less
…….…….than theseus who left
ariadne on rock outcrop after she
…….gifted him with thread
…….…….to navigate / amaze

##

we were on pins and needles that winter. we were on bobby pins. we were on pens and pencils. we were on pincers which could hurt when they caught you by the skin of your teeth then wouldn’t let go. we were on pinking shears and pink slips and pink hats. we were on pentagrams and instagrams and pentagons. we were on adapin. but we were not on pentimento. we promised ourselves that much. we would never be on pentimento

##

discuss: picasso’s representation of women. girls. marie-thérèse. normalization. aestheticization of violence against women. this in a week following the suicide of another. she too had a face that looks good splashed across social. see her in profile. teenage girl her classmates saw as europa. watched under weight of minotaur. bull-man hiding behind bull-mask

##

spin: to draw out. twist fiber into yarn or thread. to form thread. to revolve rapidly. to move swiftly. to set rotating. quantum character of sparticle

twist: to unite by winding. to mingle. to wring wrench dislocate. to distort. to pull off by torsion. to form into spiral. to cause turning. to follow a winding course changing shape. to writhe. act of turning. curve. bend. unexpected occurrence. as in plot. formed by twisting. thread. sewing silk. piece of dough. tobacco leaves. strip of citrus. a dance. spin given to ball. spiral turn. torque applied to body. strain. distortion of meaning. device. trick. front or back dive. eccentricity

##

i dream in monster. edge of house & human. cut my finger on its paper thin blade. in battle of giant anthropod. oblivious to cataclysmic comedy. the room where we used to sit and read. what did we call it floored with rot & prairie grass pushing up powder. there were barricades between us & them. there were traps. the signs said keep an eye on the children

##

the signs said keep an eye on the children. the signs said stay inside. stay calm. alert. the signs said not to approach the glass. but you keep peering into death even after i put up blackout curtains. i could always sew anything. i will so us a way out of this poem as soon as i hem the him of human. miter the seems of mother. we think something is out there. it might not matter. i might be sewing with disappearing

##

monitaur the threads of you lead places we don’t want to follow. following lines of pvc. of pharmacology. of dextrose & fentanyl & vicodin. amaze me. bully me whole human. thread me an exit. lead us a home. no going path. make me a way. body me back

##

threading the distance between us threading the windows threading the bicycle poised not midair you can see as the lights come up not house lights not hospital not helicopter but the god lights lighting up one more on this less than inevitable this maybe not so only so lonely s h e

##

monster talked to monitor & monitaur replied & momster listened & monitor became monister & monster became moniter & mon(i)(s)ter put away their differance & became
…….the space between them

##

& you know this is how you know what you don’t know. this finding the godlight. this belief this circle something. these blades that catch find require you to marry monster to monitor. so shadow shivers. so you prepare. so you sew ready

##

it was winter & orfeo
if he always looks back to check
his chain traffic angular momentum
will he sentence me then

i will write that sentence myself
ride it & right it until I re-member

the turn the name this piece
…………re-member to flute
……………………it was winter monitor
it was monster

postcard from the museum of childhood #7

she’s so mother. so mid-life. so mid-
sentence balance & interrupt. so
juggle so long. every thought
toss toss dis-
connect. let alone words.
when the balls blades breakables
stop dropping she doesn’t
can’t never. what to do with the hands—
so open. so umbrella

postcard from the museum of childhood #8

Kandinsky at the Milwaukee Art Museum—
fluid shorthand, iconographic lines,
portable symbol kit that packs
at a moment’s notice. not fleeing. not holding
on. but strolling unarmed unharmed
through 40 years of politic. of risk.
St. Petersburg-Berlin-Moscow-Weimar-
Berlin-Occupied Paris. bag filled with
the essentials. curic & oars. barbed
wire fence. dragon. spear of Saint George

postcard from the museum of childhood #18

the museum of childhood. free admission.
gallery talks by appointment. free recorded
tours. collection highlights for short visits—
theatrical t-shirts & character photos. kindergarten
bird drawings. high school ceramics. legos.
18 porcelain birthday girls (#3 missing
their head). wooden trains, possible lead hazard.
middle school acrylics. class watercolor acquired at auction.
piano, cello, oboe, ice skates, cross country skis.
stuffed animals & dolls. baby blankets. crib bedding.
photo & document collections (e.g., test scores,
school projects). hand-knit sweaters. not all items on display

Life Isn’t Always Green

I’ve left Friendly Drive,
the car parked by the elevator.
My feet seek steps of solitude
and organic green life.

Traffic sound follows me, buzzing
through Kettle Moraine rocky ups
and downs like simmering anxious
thoughts. The noise, the humanness

I can’t escape. Looking for beauty
I see brown, twisted, broken trunks—
their struggle to climb ended.
Trail moves from thinning trees to town.

Walking to Culvers, hope of wildness
dissolves like lemon ice down
my throat, but reemerges
in the park as city sounds

dissipate in unbroken brown water
around the feet of Ridge Run hills
where the path shifts, a result
of collective rerouting

around a wind-weeded branch
returned to feed the forest floor.
My thoughts settle on white ruffles
over brown decay—the fungi-coated limb

holding beginnings
………….and endings intermingled
……………………..gently forcing
………….this new path.

Unruly

I like to pee in the woods
off the edge of the trail,
hidden behind a tree
…………like a wild thing

squat low and hear
spatter on dry leaves,
watering the forest floor
…………part of the hydrologic cycle

look around at tiny trees
reaching for the light,
green growing things
…………whose names I want to know

listen for footsteps and
savor the thought of doing
something as old as humans
…………harmless, yet illegal

Detachment

Morning-damp dirt trail
twists through green sumac
tipped orange-red.

Through the quiet, I hear
the sludge of worries I carry.
My steps slow through a thick

muck of fabricated responsibility—
the need to fix someone else
to cover my own pain.

In the thought rut of what I can’t
change, I don’t see the branch
fallen across the path.

A cardinal fires out—
pew, pew, pew…be here now!
I exhale, focus my eyes, observe

cumulous clouds
over a goldenrod field splashed
with purple aster. I listen

aspen leaves clatter,
a thousand tiny hands
clapping.

Poemwalking

I forget about the half-written story,
…………the hopeful to-do list on my calendar,
……………………how long the backyard grass has grown,
………………………………the unwashed dishes…

and follow curiosity down the curve
…………of a hill, eager to discover what’s around the bend—
……………………the shiver of aspen or thick pine-shade?
………………………………I scratch my fingertips on goldenrod lace,

turn to see if the skittering squirrel is red, grey, or black,
…………ponder the marsh, the still stench of purification,
……………………listen to crows call each other home,
………………………………wait for the swallowtail to pause his thirst for nectar.

I look for the spaces of overlap—
…………where water meets land,
……………………when hills stretch out to plain,
………………………………how sunshine turns to shade

and see my thoughts change
…………with the terrain, as I scribble
……………………in my notebook to catch
………………………………the poem of my walk, to reflect
…………………………………………back on another day.

Notes

“Life Isn’t Always Green” was first published in Portage Magazine.

“Poemwalking” was first published in Bramble Lit Mag.

Authorities Drop Hate Crime Investigation

Mourning Food

Amazing Grace

The Cure

Woman Without a Country

because you were white
because you believed
because you said the Pledge of Allegiance every school day
because your teachers and parents told you so
because the policeman was your friend
you believed
…………………………..for a very long time.

but you were raped/molested/beaten
and your boyfriend/husband couldn’t protect you or
your boyfriend/husband did it
and you had learned
…………………………..all the wrong fears:
fearing the blacks and browns
fearing the stranger
instead of your white neighbor, your white uncle,
…………………………..your self.

because you had not questioned
sometimes you could not not believe
(it wasn’t safe)

so it took a long time.

you dreamed
you dreamed new dreams
and woke up in the same place

knowing
why Cinderella has no story once she’s gained the castle
suspecting that Rapunzel
bricked up her own door.

Fun & Anxiety

……………………….1
Language rolls up and nuzzles your ankle
like a kitten sometimes made of nettles:
You’re allergic to cats.
You’re deathly allergic to nettles.

You’ve never seen a kitten roll, is it
..like a lobster roll?

Steve Martin revealed the dangers of cat juggling, the
jerk. Are stand-up comics better loved than poets?
..or just better paid?

……………………….2
People back East talk funny.
People out West talk funny.
People down South talk funny.
People up North have their mouths frozen shut.

……………………….3
You’ve learned your ABC’s — isn’t that enough?

……………………….4
You can love a brand new word, as a word,
..thanks to semiotics.

……………………….5
You took Freshman composition — isn’t that enough?

……………………….6
When you get mad you can throw
..the text appropriate to that occasion
..at the offending source:
..When Brad said, “You ought to do the dishes.” I threw Adrienne
Rich’s Dream of a Common Language. When he told me I should go
to church
..I whipped June Jordan’s Kissing God Goodbye at him. When he
told me that poetry was stupid
..I reached for Pierre Joris and Jerome Rothenberg’s Poems for
the Millennium, Vol 1.

..It laid Brad out cold.

……………………….7
You speak English — isn’t that enough?

……………………….8
Can we form a Language Police? What are the penalties for misusing
the semi-colon? the comma? What about possessives?
Shouldn’t you lose a few fingers if you make a sign “Please turn the light’s out”?

……………………….9
Didn’t Jesus speak English?

……………………….10
If language reflects and creates culture, and culture
reflects and creates language, does a train conductor
leaving NYC at 3:15 pm going 35 mph en route to DC
have a better bead on the pulse of America
than a novelist?

……………………….11
If I never voice my poem
and you read it
do you interpret it?
If you hear me read my poem
but never see it written
do you “experience a performance”?

Is writing a self-effacing act?

……………………….12
If I write a poem about blueberries
because I love blueberries
..even when I drop them on a white shirt
and I use “I”
and you hate blueberries
and you read my poem —
..even though I force you to say “I love blueberries”
you will not.
Your cool intellect may appreciate
my form, my rhythm, my sound,
and the way my line
breaks.
But you will not inhabit my poem.
Does it fail?
Did I write it to piss you off?

Why do you hate blueberries?

……………………….13
Is language all about audience?

……………………….14
In marching band
I was one of 10 flutists
in front of the drum section.

The football players would run
’till their hearts burst.

Each cell sings —
blood pushes rhythm

(womb to word).

Is every body looking for their poetry?

……………………….15
Specifically, my instinct
is to Medusa:
Cixous was right.
I am right.
The Medusa is laughing
with the Sheela-Na-Gig and the Horned God.

……………………….16
Here’s a moment.

Notes

“Woman Without a Country” was a finalist in the 2001 Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Contest and appeared in the Fall 2002 (24:2) issue of Kalliope: A Journal of Women’ s Literature and Art.

“Fun & Anxiety” appears in Mercury Retrograde: Fried Electronics, Transport Mishaps, Snarled Communications; An Anthology of Poetry and Prose, ed. Sammy Greenspan (Boston: Kattywompus, 2013).

Artist’s Statement

 
I am always reading poetry, novels, and short stories. I am always listening to music, the wind in the leaves, the clomping of the pedestrians who walk by my house, the conversations going on all around me as I walk to campus. I am immersed in language and sound. I feel the rhythm of my walking, the rhythm of my swimming. Rhythms and phrases come into my head, teasing me until I write them down, discover where they are leading. Poetry makes everything else possible. I need to write. I need to play with words, with sound, and rhythm. It is what keeps me sane and alive. It is what brings me joy.

Fourteen trumpeter swans flew over me in formation in February. A blessing. Four years ago seven tundra swans few over me in February, saying, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” I looked for a greaser in a leather jacket with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth; finally, I looked up. The tundra swans were turning, and turning, coming in to land in the tributary of, the Wisconsin River that borders the Stevens Point Dog Park and the Green Trail. Open water. This is poetry; this life, this interaction, this going on. Poetry makes everything else possible. Four years ago, I was close to death: I decided to live. My mother died at the start of last December. I go on. My fifteen-year-old dog is dying, eating less each day. We go to the dog park, watch the eagles and vultures riding thermals. Look for swans. Hey!