New Year

Carry the ashes and ice
that is this body

This token
Beckons? Beacons?

I don't know



Yet here you are

January 1

explosive
all the radiance and charm

of a fat baby



Make me return
to the scrolling of life

from this snow-cast hide
to the Forsythia hinge

to the spiral hymn of sun


_

End of the Year

I sing for dawn:
caught by a single seed
future fluttering

I steal the window:

unstitching golden reflection,

gleaming disaster

I find arithmetic:

the burning sum of days

igniting welcome

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Decorating Dad

Although he may deserve a medal, all he's getting for now is some Sharpie graffiti.

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Home

Our space is braided
by the warm vibrato of your chest
the small companions of our
great journey

Then too I am summoned
by the gravity of afterlife
the clouds razored by mortal moons
defibrillating

I can trace spans of sky
knowing sun and moon recognize
everything in an embarrassment
of ambition

Except that I burrow and spelunk
in tides and pools of anger
in a cave where I keep letting
strangers in


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Amanat

The anonymous young woman was nicknamed Amanat (Treasure) by the press; her savage gang-rape  set off unprecedented protest marches and riots around India. She died today.

The story--all of it I can't even--is at the link. A few of the heart-wrenching, scream-inducing prompts are below:

On December 16, the student watched The Life of Pi at a South Delhi mall with a male friend who offered to escort her home. They boarded a private bus - the sort used so often by commuters in a city where public transport is inadequate and unreliable.

The six drunk men on board began harassing the student. They beat her friend with an iron rod. When she tried to stop them, they turned on her, hitting her with the rod before taking turns to rape her. The bus kept circling a 31-kilometre stretch in South Delhi, for hours as it rolled unstopped through a series of police checkpoints.

In messages that she scribbled for her family while on life support systems, Amanat reportedly asked if the six men who had damaged her so badly that her intestines had to be removed had been caught and punished.

The 23-year-old had persuaded her parents to sell their small piece of land in Uttar Pradesh so she could move to Delhi to study medicine. Since then, they said recently, their meals are very often rotis with namak (bread with salt).

There are so many tragedies here. One of the most frustrating may be that there are so many enlightened people in this story--the young woman living her life, her caring male friend, her parents who went through financial hardship and sacrifice to give her an education. It hurts that some completely unrelated goons can insert themselves into this narrative--precisely at the point successful change--and turn it into one of unimaginable suffering and tragedy.

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Woes and Lows 2012

Family:

• At breaking his collar bone. Breaking my heart by being such a sweetheart about it.
• Big A breaking his wrist in about ten different places and needing multiple surgeries. Blowing my mind by trying to do every single thing himself.
• Me catching my hands in a slammed door--it hurts to make a fist or curl my hand around stuff like the steering wheel.
• Nu wanting to be in the "dumb, doofus dog club" by breaking a bone too. P.S. : WTH?!

Home:

• Coming home to discover that someone had taken a BB gun to our dining room windows.
• Waking up to discover that the basement drain had flooded an assortment of decay into the house.
• Waking every morning to intense gratitude and surprise that we weren't assaulted while we slept.
• Wanting to leave nightmare rental central, but having our extremely reasonable offer on a house dissed, basically.

World:

• The gun shootings in Aurora.
• The gun shootings in Wisconsin.
• The gun shootings in Newtown. 
• Not being able to go to movies anymore. 
• Not having been able to send kids to the last three days of school before Christmas break.

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What

He's 13; she's 5. 

Sometimes I can still manage to find matching gifts that delight them.

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