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Yesterday was a tangled knot
of interruptions,
of bodies standing in front of me
all saying Pay Attention to Me now.
So I did the practical thing,
in the face of all that need:
Chopped myself into a million jigsaw pieces,
handed a bit to each earnest face,
saying, This is all I can spare now, but
come back tomorrow for more.
Oh, it tastes like lemon sugar,
I heard one of them say as they left.
Even now, I feel a tug of affection
for who I was–puzzle woman, smiling and
making sure
as she handed out
delicious pieces of herself,
to hang on to the lemon-scented core
for keeps.

An open diamond
blinking slowly at the world
waiting to be amazed.

Sounds like a lonesome country song
about a cowboy crying in his beer
over the fickle girl who left–
blond curls and an old Ford truck
rattling down the highway
and out of his heart.
She let her apron
catch the breeze and blow away
so now you’ll have to cook
for yourself, cornbread that will
never taste the same,
which brings the chorus back to you,
there on your barstool, all alone.
It makes me almost sad
to remind myself that
Tillie’s gone to Texas
was what the neighbor said
when I asked about his funny dog
who used to keep me company on walks.
But he promised
she’ll be back come spring
unlike your Tillie, cowboy,
who is gone for good.

Late last night, the angel in the backyard
spread his wings and nearly spoke.
Today, all that’s left is an odd pattern
where the world is melting beneath my window,
as if the barn spent all evening practicing
snow angels on the ground.

You’ve spent a life time
here in the City of Lacking
writing endless lists in your heart,
gray pebbles of all you don’t have–
a bit more of something:
Money, time, talent, beauty.

It’s time to move.
Now set up house across the green–
call it Joy Lane,
where the lists are of moments
laid out end to end or heaped together
glinting like hidden treasure.

When I was little and clever, nurses in crisp white uniforms appeared now and then at school, armed with sugar cubes and needles to protect us from many things. They assured us the diseases would be much worse than the shots. I remained unconvinced. But I always had a plan. Our teacher handed out half-slips of paper for our mothers to sign, one for each of the shots you’d need. Each disease prevented was on a different colored paper. A good year, you’d get just one color, or two and one was purple which was good because that one wasn’t a shot but something they squeezed from an eye dropper onto a sugar cube. Naturally everyone wanted to be protected from that disease.

 
On my walk home, I’d throw the papers away, cleverly hidden in a neighbor’s trash bin, as sneaky and smooth as if I was disposing of a body. Then my only job was not to look too smug on shot day when everyone else was lining up for pain.

 
Eventually I got caught and my teacher sent me home with a rainbow mountain of paper permission slips. Everything I’d avoided stapled together.

 
This is the story playing in my head all the time now, like a song the body forgets it’s humming, as I check the mail each day, waiting for the divorce papers to arrive, waiting for something I can sign.

You need a chill pill
is the pronouncement from my children
when the list in my head
Unravels,
when the sound of my nagging voice
irritates even me.

I picture this make-believe pill
blue and icy–
Swallowed, it would cool down
all the heat inside you
and possibly tint your lips
a calm lavender
so every time you looked in the mirror
your brain would remind you, Chill.

A poem written in response to the latest writing prompt on one of my favorite sites, Poets Online http://poetsonline.org/ Unfortunately, I neglected to notice the expiration date for prompt, which always happens with the contents of my refrigerator too, so I should be used to this by now—

Frost, out walking in his woods
choosing his words and ways
tells us all a poem should
but more than the poet ever could
caught up in his rhyming daze.

Was it, as one teacher said,
a monumental choice?
Or, as another one read,
does it mean we’ll all end up dead
and all paths are the same in the poet’s voice?

Or, as I suspect,
all the difference was the phrase
that caught the poet round the neck,
led him to shuffle the words in his deck
leaving us on this tangled trek, wondering where the truth lays.

I’ve traveled with them for years. I started as a high-wire act. Back then, it was nothing to fly. All I needed was the applause, the appreciative Gasps from tiny faces, far below.

One misstep and that was done. No comparisons to getting back on horses or bicycles could bring me back to that easy dance with risk.

I’ve been the juggler, too. So many balls in the air I could only keep going if I never set one down or counted how many were in the air and always, always kept up a mad caffeine hum.

I’ve been the girl in sequins, holding perfectly still as a man spun me around on a wheel and threw knives and missed by inches, most days.

But now? Jobs are limited for a woman my age. They need a ticket-taker, a fortune-teller, and someone to dip the apples in that red, red candy and wrap them in nuts and plastic to sell with the cotton candy. In another decade or two I’ll only be fit to sweep the peanut shells off the dirt floor.

These are the ringmaster’s offers. Danger free ways to pass the rest of your time here.

Or—

The ringmaster’s eyes flick to the side, to the tent door flapping in a high wind.

Again, this morning ritual
the alarm, the awkward scramble for the snooze button
so I can hurry after the tail of that last dream
before it slips out the window.
But now the door between worlds is drifting open
and I wonder if we need milk or what day it is or remember
an early morning meeting requiring coffee and donuts and what flavor
donuts and the real world
has wound itself around me again, like a cat
rubbing against your ankles.
I try to wake just enough to shoo it away
but it’s too late, that other world is gone again
Except for the certainty that it included elephants
and lace.