invisible mountains I exhaled
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
an unfolding
invisible mountains I exhaled
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
but I haven't told all the stories yet
I'm sorry to sound like a broken record, but I can't say it out loud to other people (except Big A)... I miss Scout. I miss Scout. I miss Scout.
I do keep telling stories about him to everyone... and sometimes if the person I'm telling the story to is a stranger I might never see again, I tell the stories in present tense as though he were alive.
I have so many stories. How we called him the 'writing wolf', because he'd wake up and hang out with me to write. Or how we called him 'wolf puppy' when he'd writhe on his back and bare his teeth. and how--we don't have a name for this--but how he'd get upset at raised voices and bark at the person who was being mean.
Pic: Scout running to meet me--just about two years ago. This may be my favorite (grainy, fuzzy) picture of Scout.
Friday, April 14, 2023
springing
I got an hour of sleep last night. There are inscrutable little comments and emails from me with time stamps ranging from 1:30 am (when I headed up to bed) to 4:30 am (when I fell asleep) all over the place.
Then I had a dream where Nicole and StephLove visited me--I lived in a flooding basement apartment, the leak from the street-level windows springing up like tears. Happy times. But I remember smiling because Nicole asked, with gentle curiosity if "the seal would hold"--and I remember thinking how like her to address an issue without alarming everyone.
EM and I did a 40-minute version of our "Hope as a Cognitive Process" workshop for the WGS Consortium out of the U of Wisconsin this morning. It feels like we have enough to turn our spiel into an article. For the first time, editors have been sending us queries for an (as yet) unwritten article. That feels kinda fast track; kinda high pressure.
My breathless delivery of all this news = my high because Scout is having a good day after the okayest day yesterday.
Pic: It's spring everywhere and seemingly all at once--on my walk with Big A this morning, both the forsythia and the willow were in rival shades of yellow along the Red Cedar.Saturday, March 25, 2023
complex bedtime procrastination: am I up early or up late?
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
translation
Oh sad, sleepy brain!
Did you just envision
"musketeers" wrong?
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
-
an unfolding
I have been dreaming of people invisible mountains I exhaled into existing twisting, quickening and though short-lived as grass, are seeds...

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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...
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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 world...
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Friends and old neighbors shutting it down in honor of John Crawford. _