Monday, June 06, 2022
as I lay me down to sleep
Monday, April 25, 2022
bedtime story
And this is not at all unusual--I've been averaging between 3-6 hours of sleep for years now... and put like that, I'm worried there's going to be some spectacular comeuppance for this.
In some ways I'm a perfect candidate for fractured sleep because I have family from other continents and time zones--so no matter what the time, I have people on hand to have heart-to-hearts and to text links to hilarious songs like Rowdy Baby (no babies were harmed in the making of this video).
But also Big A works nights, so we're usually texting and chatting about stuff and keeping in touch and being silly as well. And if he's home, his sleep schedule is messed up by working nights, so I'm hanging out with him then too. And tonight At seems to be up and feeling chatty and is sending me Langston Hughes poems about Lenin and I sent him that clip of Paul Robeson singing to Scottish miners (cross cultural solidarity is my favorite and my boy knows me).
Anyway, this will all work itself out, or won't. If I'm going to be up all night anyway, I feel like there ought to be a cuddly baby to keep me company at least 😁.
Pic: The Red Cedar was flooding its banks on our walk yesterday.
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
as I lay me down to sleep
it's time to kneel at night's altar
quieten thoughts
Sunday, March 27, 2022
appearing overnight
to eclipse gravity, light, and language
beloved, who is this wild animal
with its tiled back turned
whisper to me the place it came from
why does it watch for you to sleep
creep glances to your chest
Sunday, January 30, 2022
keeping it real
Thursday, July 29, 2021
our mother would hate this poem
parents' fight from decades ago
when they were fighting always
and always passive-aggressively
my father sounding patient
my mother sounding smart
neither of them listening to each other...
from our room: my sister and I listened,
grading them--not on how right or wrong
they were, but how not mean they were.
our mother lost our ratings
for our father lost the fights
afterwards, he wouldn't talk to her for days...
every time she happened to be in the room,
he'd be whistling or humming something
to show how he didn't care and didn't hurt--
like at all--not even a little bit
Monday, June 14, 2021
mixed
Had a welcome breakthrough on a work project and managed to meet a proposal deadline one whole day ahead of deadline.
Took a nap. Woke up because of a horrifying moment in a post-apocalyptic-style dream (someone had tumbled down some stairs because I bumped them and when I went to check on them, I was captured and they started pulling on my clothes... also, my dad was supposed to help me keep watch, but he fell asleep and didn't hear me when I was shouting for help).
I'd planned a "Summer Celebration" to celebrate the end of Nu's 8th grade year.... it literally got rained on after we set the picnic table.
Ah well, watermelon tastes almost as good indoors too.
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
simmer
I'm stopped at the traffic light at on my way home and it turns into a wait for the slowest train in the world to pass.
There's a rap on the window and At's face beaming down at me. I unlock the doors, he pops in, I hug him so hard. He takes off his mask; I tell him to keep it on; he's all "but we're vaccinated;" and I'm all "you haven't had the second shot yet." Then he's referencing something about Bill Gates and vaccines--maybe this?
I begin laughing because it's so random--and as I told him, in a couple of days I'm going to think I dreamt this whole sequence of things.
And I'm laughing because I'm so relieved to see and hold him on yet another day when to be the mother of a brown-skinned man is a day for a slow simmering fear.
Friday, January 22, 2021
Repair
while I keep walking
everywhere.
Silence sings here, shame too--
like a mosquito hymn
in my ear.
Perhaps I'm a savant of fracture
on an enraptured
exiled page--
perhaps I've siphoned my love
into stories just a little
or too late.
Friday, January 08, 2021
Threnody
Waking in a labyrinth
with the outline of a lie
around us the dark blossoms
clinging like skin
hidden in sight like the dark
set aside like a dementing task
hurrying to meet our dark
corners of darkness--passion-
perversion--spill into you and me
returning to the dead lamp
you are furious as a rakshasa
engorged, incoherent as sirens
I'm as possessed as a pisasu
who possesses only you, and
can die for it. Or live. Or shriek.
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Within Without
Please hold my head as gently
as a bomb labeled 'headache'
knowing the earth is waiting
feeding time under the loam
who is it who knocked on the door (we didn't hear)
who is it who wants to come in (we can't really see)
howling into the cusp, dreams away from disaster
learning the circuitry of sadness, the lineage of loss
For in a different world
I lost many months ago
my tongue a tombstone
fingers clawing worms
Friday, October 09, 2020
Hank and Huck
*Extra Huckie hugs*
I told my dream to Nu and we marched up to Big A and informed him that we needed a third puppy.
(I love how my brain braids things--I wonder if "Hank" is because I spent time with JL's "Henry" last weekend and "Hank" is a form of "Henry" but sounds a bit like "Huck?")
Friday, July 24, 2020
24/7 Panic Snapshots
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Gratuitous cute-goofy picture |
Once because my mind was singing the chorus to MISSIO's "Wolves" and it was terrifying in the dark.
Once because I was imploring Mai and the macaque to run, run, run (just finished Ocean Vuong's beautiful and brutal On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous).
Once because I dreamed I had taken At and Nu clothes shopping and they were breathed on and almost touched accidentally a few times by other shoppers. (How extra stupid would this unease have been a year ago?!)
And finally, because of the reasonable, rational, familiar dread of the school year approaching and all the preparation that needs to be accomplished in the weeks that remain. It's here--July 24th... 24/7. In exactly one month we'll be welcoming students back to campus.
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
I'm awake in the dream
these are drugs, my thoughts drag
reciting pretty pretty pretty atrocities
something about zombie limbs
climbing, blooming
gift-wrapped in colorful skin
*
he surprised me when
he said his daughter
was an angel
I was really surprised she
wasn't as dead as
I imagined her
*
I'm dying to ask everyone
how is a six-year-old an angel?
what has been done to her?
Friday, November 01, 2019
Catch
tickles start in my palm, aim for my pits
catch in my throat: I am open, I let
my shame (shame) show
here are bugs leaking from my breath
like starry maps from blind eyes. O
I have lost my fingerprints
I must just be falling asleep I must be
falling falling falling into depths
or deaths. I don't
know the presidents who visit in my
dreams on boats shaped like me,
wooden as my smile. I fight
I find my freedom with my fists and feet
the slick of water still gets me though
entanglement, undertow
-
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Meanwhile in real life...
There's so much pain in the world, and so much of the time, we're protected from the worst of it. I spent a lot of yesterday finding money to to people--Beto, Abrams, Gillum... while reading about voter disenfranchising and voting machine malfunctions... and then the news of the shooting in the synagogue at Pittsburgh. Today was about the Bolsonaro win in Brazil and a very depressing text exchange with my usually upbeat GOTV champion, At.
Nu and I cobbled some good times despite it all--we went to temple yesterday, UU today, LOLed at Ghostbusters 2016, delivered food to a pregnant friend, made arrangements for kids in Chennai to get Diwali presents and sweets, did tons of laundry, got Nu a new pair of kicks, spent some of Nu's birthday money on (unnecessary) pens and a stuffy, stocked the pantry, did a bunch of baking, and made a couple of comfy dinners.
At some point this weekend we got lost and even that was lovely.

And yet through it all, the knowledge of what lay outside our bubble--inexorable as the real rain, the creeping cold, and our leaky roof.
_
Saturday, October 27, 2018
It was just me and Nu last night...
Bombs were falling from the sky, and I was digging something out of the car, Nu was terrified of the bombs and said she was going to hide with the others (not family--the other war victims/refugees) in the ditches, so I tell her ok, go--I'll come join you in just a second. Except I didn't notice in which direction she headed off. So I keep calling her name on the outskirts of every crowd of people, but don't hear her call back to me. I keep doing this for hours... may be days. Until finally, a poor woman with many children (aren't we all poor by this point?) tells me that she remembers Nu and that even as she ran away from the car, "a bomb took her." It had happened the minute we'd parted and I hadn't known. The woman is telling me that she tried to reach her but couldn't, that she remembers her "large, wide eyes."
I looked at the expiry dates on everyone's passports when I woke up. The kids need to renew next year.
______________________
school counselor call + Cesar Sayoc + upcoming travel + Yemen + Gaza + refugees from Honduras + Life + work stress + Adnan Kashoggi + mom and sis traveling to Dubai
Friday, October 26, 2018
In the Machines
most nights, rocking
the cradle of the landline
we never use. I never pick up
but I see their faces vaporize
in my icy breath,
their empty mouths asking
You put away all the leftovers?
Do you know who we are?
I can see their mouths form it,
feel their curses touch my body
I mumble irritably
and try to solve their hungry
riddle, without magic:
pointing them to the fridge
_
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Summer Insomnia
to a crescendo till
the creatures arrive--
airy resurrections in
their bony hearts, eyes
scary, still screeching.
Small, accruing doubt,
all the signals are
yelling the death knell
of cellphone carillons
stones, petals, shells--
night falls, folds over
_____________
Big A and I took a nap right around the time Nu gathered the puppies and headed off to bed, but we both woke up to the most godawful wildlife brawl at midnight. Then we stayed up until about 3 am 'chit-chatting' as kindergartner Nu used to call it.
_
Friday, December 15, 2017
Reading
brutish
dusty
untrustworthy
on the edges of my brain
the hot animal knees
me, tears me,
sees me in tears
on the undercurrent of loss
in the flooding and
leaking
and catching
I can untie words heavy as air
as ephemeral; I am
a lookout, I am
eaten by the sea
(Note: I'm reading Truddi Chase's When Rabbit Howls and took on a new CASA case yesterday)
_
"a more perfect union"
Today At watched as the local Teamsters served management at his workplace papers indicating that At and his fellow workers had signed unio...
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Today is the birthday of the best sister in the whole world (mine:)! Happy, Happy Birthday, Chelli! [AA, my favorite aunt in the whole wor...
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Friends and old neighbors shutting it down in honor of John Crawford. _
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At had us pose for this pic up at Aunt R's place on Lake Huron so he could put it up in his dorm. "Don't tur...