Sorting out

I sort out summer days
by pages, one page is for the dust piled books
One page is for sunshine cupped inside two little palms
One page overflows and drips water and the final page is
blank for the night.

Timely letters

part of a longer poem titled Timely Letters

I receive your timely letters
each Thursday, after mass
unstamped, unopened
in them parts of days, moments and dried roses
I always write back, though at times my letters pile unopened.

Unabiding Tongue

We stopped watching, stopped looking
the moment we decided to open our eyes
around us, darkness
no power, no heat, no water,
no sounds from the sea, our neighbor
We look up, between the breaths he calls
the cloak-draped, thin brass arms are too familiar
We've seen them once before, escaped them and ran
he calls us all towards it, the emergency exit ,
Death roars and calls again, comes sharp
like teeth biting an unabiding tongue.

The N speaks

Need
Noise
Noons
Nights

No

Nearing
Nagging
Needing
Nods

No

Neat
Nursing
Needy
Nuts

A definite yes, to all possibilities
Branching.

Raised from the dead

She feels for the gap between my ribs

for a breath, she feels for the flesh- alive

her hands, my mother caress my head, curl my hair

and wail, she wails me, a bird nursed back from death 

raised by Thumbelina's headscarf, she tied it first, thrice around my shoulder blades

tightening the grip in the hole winter dug,

then Thumbelina, smaller, her face white and her eyes yellow from lack of harvest

took me under her hair, sang me a lullaby to raise me again, once more from ash 

folded me carefully and presented me to my mother

her gift after long hours of winter, of a winter in the dead of June. 

Like a blank

You fill me like a blank,
love, like an indentation in a page,
leave me ragged, love
Sometimes you pluck me, young
like a rose, you leave me withering, love
catch me once, love
free me with the back of your hand
like an old sock out of a drawer's corner
Lo     ve

fire breaks

Talc powder puffs in the sunlight

it is warm after a bath

after tucking into a rain of steaming water

a rain of fire and fog

but the gunfire starts, 

starts low into a speedy labor

starts high into little pauses,

She brushes her hair, 

she brushes the roots taking the thoughts out

she

sprays on her clean,lean hands talc powder

the TV is blasting

she recites a verse

the fire breaks

baby starts to cry

fire breaks

baby grabs a noisy toy

fire breaks over her

baby squeezes life out of the toy

toy wails, screaming for life and fire breaks in

fire breaks out

baby cries again, 

fire breaks and Nina doll lost its left arm

baby cries, fire breaks, she breaks, baby cries,

fire breaks, she doesn't break anymore, baby still cries loudly

then it  all seizes and fire breaks

the silence