An excerpt from the collection 'Lighting Saints on Fire To Ignite The World':
Their Soldiers, Our Soldiers. Brothers Sisters Mothers Lovers. And the Fathers Are Absent (Prayer for Saint Joan of Arc)
In this poem I won’t use the words colonialism or imperialism or terrorism or fascism. I will only use the word murder. It’s quite the cop-out, to be a Catholic during war time. My uncle Jerry was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, due to his spirituality and, you know, RELIGION. My dad was an atheist who hated nuns and priests but was going to jump the border to a small town in Canada if his number got called, my mom sneaking up later to meet him in the Big North, my dad knowing that the war was bullshit during the consciousness raising late sixties. Rock and Roll saved his life with CCR and the Stones, my mom the glee shrieking Beatles fan.
After all my angry years I’m a cop-out too. I wrote enough kack-the-president poems to last a lifetime or life-term, but Elohim has something else planned for me. To type weakness, to sing surrender, my cheek shall be turned from side to side until I’m beaten into something beautiful at last.
/
Excerpt from 'Your Lips Are Like a Scarlet Thread':
To Be of Service
The goblet between your cathedral thighs.
The copper penny stiffens between my crooked teeth.
My tattooed hands like blunted scissors
keep your legs silken spread and St. Andrew’s crossed.
The meadowlark grunting
behind your clenched teeth
betrays your mammal self.
As your spastic flesh calms,
the motion of cigarette collaged sheets
ripple
like the gorged swell of a river
eating the edges of welcoming shores.
/
Excerpt from the out of print 'Odyshape' published by Bent Press
It’s Mine
My mind and body have both belonged
to a lot of other people before they belonged to me,
old hands gripping too tight
and yes there was darkness
and unwanted everything
but
I’m
a grown woman
and
childhood demons
have lost their poetic allure
so I just focus on how it is now
with hard bones and awkward limbs
like steak knives in the kitchen sink
sticking out at dangerous angles
and I search to find the mystery
of this six feet of bone and muscle and a round ass
that gets me cat calls on the street and slaps in the bedroom
and this body has always served a purpose
by carrying around this scattershot mind
with dirty feet always moving moving moving
and so I stare at myself naked under fluorescent lights
and I’m dirty old lady voyeur
and grin lewd and possessive
at this body that is mine and no one else’s
and it hasn’t changed that much
just minor swelling and shrinking
so it’s not like it looks that different
it’s just that my eyes have finally adjusted to its charm.
