A love poem to fight climate change

And she whispers “I love you too”

You tell her you love her in the long hours you spend hunched over your desk
Learning their names in latin:
Acer Rubrum, Acer saccharum, Acer saccharinum
(They too sound like poetry in your mouth).
The names run over your tongue, minty like black birch (Betula lenta) just under the bark.
You spell your love to her in the boot treads you leave,
Drawing lines across fresh snow, leaving traces of you in the mud,
Keeping the company of the prints of white tailed deer and New England cottontail.
You whisper you love her like a prayer when you see news
Of fires in California and Australia and record
Hot days at the poles,
You tell her you love her when she turns your back tan from long days in the sun
You love her with every stroke of your shovel into rich soil
Every hole you dig to nurture the beginnings of another living thing.
You tell her you love her with the stroke of your pen against paper that used to be a tree
Addressing the envelope to your town hall, state representatives, national congress
And when your feet fall on asphalt streets
In time with the other feet, lined up footstep to footstep, shoulder to shoulder
Waving blue-green signs and singing for a future
You know she hears you murmur,
Low under the rhythm of the crowd, that you love her.

And if you listen close,
Under the shouting of Jays in the fall,
Or the rush of a pregnant river at snow-melt
The chickadees and nuthatches outside your window at sunrise
The red maples blushing with joy every springtime
She’s saying “I love you too.”

Body series 19

This poem draws inspiration from my salsa teacher, Andrea Gibson, and the Hampshire College meme page. Thanks also to my roommate Mira who pointed out that not all power has to be masculine. 

Queer as in Fuck You

Do not mistake pretty for trustworthy
My pronouns are they/them/not yours
My lipstick is that shade of red because I have made it out of the blood of the men I have eaten
Like I will eat you too.

You call me girl and I say "not-girl"
You call me lady, woman, goddess
And I shrug these off like ill-fitting dresses
And you say "silly girl"

But I'm a flavor of femme that you've never held in your mouth
A flavor that you'll never taste--not even if you're lucky
And the fact that you'll never hold this femme inside you--
Does it drive you mad?
Does it make you angry?

My lipstick doesn't blush my lips so they are easier for you to find in the back seat of your shitty car
My lipstick is a reminder of the blood I have shed to get here
A call to my lips--notice me!
A call to my mouth--that I might be better heard against the sea of misogyny

These heels lift me up in the world,
So that I may see eye to eye
And I shave the sides of my head so that you remember there is a skull underneath my soft, tumbling hair
I pierce my own face with metal--a warning
If I could do this to my own face, just think how I could fuck you up...

Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you

number 39

The number 39 rounds the corner and suddenly all of it is blazing brilliant bright in the winter sun.

This magic of metals and mirrors

To take one light source and make it two

Twice as bright

Twice as alive 

Living, beating, roaring around the corner and coming to a halt

Ready, pregnant, waiting

To take me to my next adventure 

For Erryn

Hey! I think you’re beautiful

And brilliant 

And radiant

And resilient

I would like to cover you in kisses please!

I would like to write love poems to you

And dance with you

And watch you smile

Thanks for being you

Something about wintertime . . .

Everyone has heard the "every snowflake is unique" bullshit
I get it
Ice crystalizes
Randomly
I cannot stand to give meaning to the universe constrained by six directions
Constrained by symmetry
I held a snowflake on my glove and took it to an old flame
Said, "Look! Watch the perfection of the sky and what it has wrought!"
But it melted before she turned around

This winter I welcomed the coming of the cold
Excited for the clarity it might bring
The clear air, I decided, would show me each imperfection in perfect focus
I spent days focusing on the smudges I found on my glasses
The pimples on my legs
The hickeys that should have faded from her still tattooed onto my neck
Good thing winter is scarf season.

Excited by the days too cold for snow
Where the air would burn my lungs
The act of breathing made harsh by the simple fact of survival
Each sharp breath dragging down my throat
I relish the pain

In parts of Ontario
(She told me)
They measure the temperature not by degrees but in
Seconds it will take your naked skin
(I still blush when she says naked)
To catch frostbite:
The seconds between the moment that the cold wraps around your delicate fingers
Kisses your pink nose
And takes them in first burning and then
Numbness
She and I know a thing or two about numbness

I went for a run last week
Because I wanted to run away from this feeling and I tried to run so fast I left behind the cold and
Although I know there's more oxygen in the colder, denser air
It was hard to breathe
I didn't notice the cold until I got back inside
And the warm air flowed back into my numb legs
So that they itched in warming up
Turning red and irritated
Too late protesting their brutal treatment in the weak winter daylight.
The irony of this does not escape me.


The winter sunlight and I agree about the general shape of things:
We shine together on the snow
Bringing light into the world in a prismatic rainbow of
Color. We shine the sky a color of blue so bright it looks like it's glowing with its own light
We're so bright you can hardly stand to look.
But step out in the cold and we'll take breath away
Without warming the lonely earth
We bring to heat, just blinding light.
Perhaps it's better that way.

This one is dark

I'm doing much better than this poem would lead you to believe. It's a mark of my healing that I'm even able to articulate these feelings. Still, it's not a happy poem.

A Spell for Survival

The sun will rise tomorrow morning, despite your best efforts

You know this as you lay awake in a cold and empty bed

Watching the neon lines on the clock mock you

3:33

Witching hour.

The house moans and it’s not so much the sounds that are unfamiliar

But the silence

The absence of another person breathing

The bed is so cold.

You’ve run through your meditation exercises three times though

You never thought about how easily sleep came

When you slept next to him.

You miss it, the way you miss the ease of breathing when you have a cold.

The darkness isn’t getting lighter (not yet, at any rate)

And the bed is so cold

But your eyes are growing accustomed to the dark

The same way your heart grows accustomed to feeling like there’s a gaping hole inside of it.

Your thoughts happen faster than you think they do in the daytime

Oh god I’m so lonely

The bed is so cold without him

And the distance between you and him seems farther even then a continent

This poem should end with the sweet relief of sleep

Or the fiery declaration of independent, fiery enough to warm your bed without him

Or the hopeful tune of birdsong

On this night none of these things spare you the dark long night

But the sun comes up, despite your best effort.

written in the car on 1/2 driving to the airport

My lips are raw from rubbing against yours

I drink your profile in

Glowing against the street lights 

Not the white dress you wanted

But

Contrary to the sweet words I breathed into your ears moments ago 

Nobody is perfect