Shelter

She chose me,
the plain brown dog
still sodden with abandonment
and the bookish little girl with tangled hair.

Anxious eyes pleaded through the chain-links,
and I dropped to all fours
on smooth cement that smelled of lemon bleach,
pressed my face into the wire.

It was then that she claimed me,
groveled up, ears held high with hope,
and out from under the cage door
came the rough, warm pads of her paw
to press down against my fingers.

I looked up at my mother and said
“This is the dog for me!”

I was very, very right.

Would that it could be so easy now,
that I could stroll into a shelter
for the lost and the rejected,
the too-clumsy or too-wild,

and scan along their faces until The One
with his anxious eyes and rough, warm palms
chooses me.

Fortune

YOUR MENTALITY IS PRACTICAL AND ALERT
claimed the cookie,
in tall blue print above my lucky numbers
and the Chinese word for “soup.”
I slapped my hand to my mouth and grinned,
slumped in a sunless cell of whiteboard walls
and fading Expo markers,
gorging myself on pork-fried rice
and the bland milieu of histology text.
Yes, I thought, this is good news
after failing my first exam by two
flawed bubbles on a salmon-colored Scantron slip,
Fortune says I’ll be a doctor, after all.

I remember a time
God, six years ago…
I clung to the arm of my punk-rock lover,
nuzzled into his neck tattoos,
not quite at home in my blue-streaked hair.
His mom fed the ferrets and nodded, approving,
… maybe a little relieved, I think…
“He finally picked a keeper,” she said,
“you’re so… practical.”
PRACTICAL. The word fell
clunk on my ears, and I guess I was
offended. After all, wasn’t I the one
with graffiti jeans and the aching
poems spilled in the margins of calculus notes?
Who was this bland and practical girl
a mother might endorse? Not me.

Not me?

Violet's Eyes

Violet frumps, slumps into the sofa
and notes
the bright, white kiss of Chris' fingertips
in the fleshy pink of Rose's knee,
the thrumming purr of Nathan's chest
as Lily's lips slip
into the hollows of his throat.
Violet wants to take the rock
from Rose's finger
and crush it
deep into her cornea,
until the world splinters into diamond, blood,
and diamond.

What the Shelter Kids Left Me

I cannot write them immortal,
Nor can I dream them perpetual
children.
Somewhere I can’t see them, they are growing
into sad-eyed secretaries and shrewd
negotiators, cramming
for their SAT’s in a Laundromat
behind a brown brick apartment.
Someday I will see her
browsing Sephora in a marble-halled mall,
manicure adorning the handle of a stroller…
won’t know her.
Someday I will hear him
lying to a hooker in a urine-rank alley,
tobacco-voice scraping over gaping wounds,
“Never had a mother,
but I bet she looked like you.”

All I have are names and blurry visions,
scenes that tiptoe
on the blunted edge
between memory and imagination.

I have Joshua, who every day wanted me
to measure the inches he’d sprouted overnight.
I see his crooked grin
and the tiny brown teddy he clutched to his heart,
the one he left in a corner of my office
when I left for the night.
He shuffled in the next morning, crumpled,
tear-stained cheeks and dumb
with grief, barely able to mumble
“... my bear....”
I see him cradled in a desk chair,
giggling while I read him Dr. Seuss.
His mother told me how sad he was
whenever my office door was closed.

I have Nathaniel, as I scrubbed
Silly Putty from the seams and frayed elastic
of his blue-jeans.
I see his chipmunk cheeks and blue eyes,
and his resilient stare; as Daddy howled and cussed
over Mommy's meth,
Nathaniel crashed Tonka Trucks together,
making sounds of destruction
through chapped lips and baby teeth.

I have Alicia, with her bony body
trembling in my lap,
and a bright baby blanket thrown over us;
the collar of my shirt clung with sweat
and yellow waves of heat stung my cheeks...
still, she shivered.
Her brown skin burned
against my worried fingertips
while her father walked the fifteen blocks for Tylenol
and paid with change.
Her natty braids were tucked against my chest,
chafing my chin every time she coughed.
The sticky bubbling of her breath chilled me
as fever chilled her.

I have Camila and her accented giggle,
“I like-a you!”
Cameras caught her once, alone
in the TV room, hand between her legs,
rubbing, rocking, moaning, and only six years old.
Love and hormones, pain, all tangled up
in blood-bursts spurting from her mother's face...
and big brother, sucking on sore knuckles.
He yanked Camila’s pigtails
and thrust himself upon her, panting and broken.
I see her pleated plaid skirt and a smile as wide as her face,
painted purple-blue for Halloween.

I have a hollow in my gut when, longing and alone, I wonder
where they are,
these and the ten dozen little faces
that flickered past my office door,
my memories of them worn smooth
with too much touch, but vivid still.
Would Joshua know my name
if we bumped elbows at a Safeway?
Has Camila's accent faded?

Does anything fade?

Self-Medication

Do you know how poetry heals
me? And how one day, I will come
into it, I will.
I will learn fear
of abstractions and clarity
of image
(fear and clarity go together, I guess)
and I will let honeyed snakes and crystals
slip
from behind my tongue,
some of which may heal
the world.
But please, until that day,
let it heal me
every time an angry man points
and says, “you!”
and every time a gentle man
does not.

The Cistercians

Walking, they are a clamor
of white
waves and seabirds.
In prayer,
marble guardians,
moonlight pouring
over shoulders and knees.

A mountain cowled and caped
with snow
reveres them in the hollow
of her breast,
sighing down the secret
she discovered long ago
of how to burn, burn,
and boil
within.

Darkness Dance

I do a darkness dance today
into the hollow of alone
I do a darkness dance, and still
I know my life is not my own

I whirl into the cold of night
no light I see, no comfort find
You leave me to the vast unknown
and to the tortures of my mind

I do a darkness dance today
and howl for You to rescue me
I do a darkness dance with you
I dance my way to Calvary

I stomp and spin upon the coals
and partner shadows of the trees
in tarantellas, waltzes, steps
performed in blindness, on my knees

I do a darkness dance today
into the black, into the rain
I do a darkness dance, and then
I praise Your holy name again