AN(T)IMUS

Now that everyone's
looking, let's say it:
Ants know nothing
they travel illegibly

you're a windmill
fielding vacuums
while they prowl
decompositional

splicing suburbia,
picnics; where
I like when you lie
(above me, hovering)

love scissored restless
wake up happy wake up
margins of repeated dying
sun our un-tempered hope.

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Note: Not so much a poem about Memorial Day festivities as the memory of Big A's complaints about being "over-scheduled" although he attended just one of yesterday's three planned events. (The kids and I went to all three. Ha.) We'll have to find some way to accommodate my need for variety and his need for quiet.

Home Theater

Just dropped the kids off at the grandparents, who are bravely taking them to see the local production of 42nd Street.

Before they left, both brats had accused me of cruelty... to their toys.

I put Baby A's plastic dragon in the sink, and she cried through my explanation that having dropped him in dog poop, we owed him a bath. "But you just don't understand," she spluttered, "he can't swim; you're dying [killing] him."

Li'l A's accusation was a little more sophisticated. I'd arbitrarily taken the skeleton animal he won at the fair and given it to Baby A because she was whiiiiiiining to see it. "You're like a slave master," he smirked, "you took my baby and gave it someone else."

Your actors have been:

Eating People is Wrong

I have absolutely nothing against Gwyneth Paltrow--Shakespeare in Love may have even been my favorite movie for a while (because really, how many movies are made for Eng. Litt. people?!).

But this month, when my subscription (thanks, friend L!) showed up, I knew I couldn't leave it out on the kitchen table the way I usually do with Bon Appetit's gorgeous food porn. This month, Gwyneth Paltrow is on the cover.

Not saying Gwyneth isn't gorgeous, just saying I don't want to eat her face. I'm sure she too would encourage that sentiment.

_

Back on Air

And these prayers are to myself
these dreams are drunk alone

subtract addresses from needs
and add goodbyes to arrivals

I lived in music once
I talked once like air

fears were small rooms
thoughts huge and cirrus

Just now all type is white
on paper black with desire

some words part my lips, crawl
out, dazed as new butterflies.

_

Topless on Facebook (and almost Eyeless in Gaza)

Nope, not another inadvertent cleavage mishap.

These are actually pictures of my three-year-old playing on the Slip N' Slide with some of her best friends in the neighborhood and Li'l A. Our neighbor J hailed us just as we returned from Li'l A's allergy shot expedition and the kids went off nextdoors in their running shorts and tees, stripped off their tees, and proceeded to have a muddy good time.

All the other kids are boys, and Baby A is both the youngest and a girl. No one cared except a cross-country friend who called to counsel that I cover up the three-year-old's chest. I'd talk Topfreedom, except that even that's not the issue as most three-year-old girls are literally undifferentiated from most three-year-old boys chest-wise.

_

Din

minds waiting on tables
dinner on minds, in air

your hands are fish
your mouth is water

your belly pregnant
with fancy flames

tender are vegetables
lost in becoming language

steam stretches branches,
falls thick and everywhere

my voice finds its legs
and children, dinner is here
_

Our Hiatus

Made mad by memories
I said to you: go
you went

I wish you to come
but wait
And all the stares stay

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