THREE POEMS
Lineage
Background Station
The World to Come
The flowering waterbeds I’ve dreamt of this place
abandoned boxes the tallest canopy of
green dust Find red and black drums around the oyster beds Waiting
by the shoreline our whole lives I’ve dreamt
To share one death, a life in it/s infinite musical gesture To swim under
a doom-lit death I’ve dreamt
To become heavy as the moon is
My iridescent wave good-bye: I step over a dirt road,
the rippling
highway above a roomful I’ve dreamt of beloved things I’ve dreamt of
My mother the question would I like to take off my dress I’ve dreamt of choosing
stay
wade in the silver pools wave in the still Earth,
I cannot stay long I say but I want to lie about this I want to say (I’ve dreamt)
I cannot leave I cannot hang up my dress
take off my shoes (I’ve dreamt to) hide them in mud I want to live
as statue sewn to the middle of the forest I’ve dreamt to
believe
it is better here That tomorrow I will see you this place
not having ((I’ve dreamt of))
to remember a face
any of them.
Background Station
the alarm clock, the snooze, the numbers, the keys, the steering wheel, the accelerator, you, a suitcase
open dream that at a carnival the apparition
crowded faces around a crow she was dead Rose
and now, Fay, and now Bernard and now
The family is gone has built stones, crows all over the cars
Stay? [the simple movement/pan left] the parking lot is full
The ferris wheel is empty and now, love it is simple lives inside my party dress my under dressed
automobile painted green the forest where a plane crashed and sunk a planet crashed and sunk the car
Didn’t make it the airport waited
I intentionally got lost apparition in the crowd
The faces on the ferris wheel the blue, the green, the
purple ashes shaken from the trees rain, rain Rain! The amount is enclosed from her face an ambulance, tinnitus the phone
I am here, I am here you walk down pavement like sand pavement like stopping here is the car it is black like the crows it sings
We are driving I was waking up
I was sleeping the forest was green around a Rose
How was it? The soaring, then
coming down,
heavy rain
since 3 AM
intervals of 15, the snooze the phone ringing
inside your suitcase my shoe, the trees a key
Yes, we are too lazy to be dead. Yes, this is a command. Her heart opens as they try the clamp with the iron tips. Her heart opens the many doors which they ask for. Yes this is your daughter digging a hole planting hairs from her scalp. Into your love-cavity we go. Did you get my note? When they buried her the sign on her back was a geo-location. There were so many o’s on her skin in her name and this made the women round as the tunneling winds. Did you get my map? I dare you to find me, find us. Yes, this is a command.
lives in Honolulu where she is a PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii, an instructor of creative writing and composition, and runs the M.I.A. Art & Literary Series. Her work has been published nationally and internationally by Unshod Quills, Hearing Voices, Hawaii Women’s Journal, Tinfish Press, Spork Press, Shampoo, Anderbo, Juked, Barnwood, DIAGRAM, Dark Sky Magazine, 2 River Review, The Dirty Napkin Review, and others. She has a chapbook coming out from Tinfish Press, as well as a chapbook coming out from Highway 101 press this year.