There's hope for me yet

 

Press the compress to my swollen eye

Hanna sleeps soundly on the red couch 

Suzie sleeps soundly on the thick, dark gray blanket filling her round pen 

Wilson sleeps soundly on the black and wood reading chair made in 1958 

I find somewhere else to sit 

I'm an apparition of my former self 

I know what you mean about the penury 

Mine has been of the spiritual variety 

A refrain 

It's been too much for too long 

I was taught we're too good for problems like that 

I was taught to spring from sheen to sheen never stopping 

I was taught it is shameful to suffer 

All I want to do is read and write and bike and garden and walk in the woods 

I keep trying to tell people—

how lonely I am

This, too, is a form of loneliness 

That real slender gal

 

It's been a quiet one  

It's been so loud

The internet is so boring now 

Doctor narcissist loves you  

No stone upturned 

Last night slipping backwards off the ottoman 

For months my body has denied me pleasure 

Grief has changed me 

I have never aspired less 

All I want to do is read and garden and bike and write and walk in the woods 

Fall is resplendent 

Atrocities are everywhere 

This country has broken my heart 

Nicknames for Suzie

 

Suze 

Suzie Q

Suze McQ

Suzie McQuzie 

Monkey 

Bibi

Beepee 

Sleepy Beepee 

Goober Doober 

Girly Whirly 

Galeroni  

The Baby 

Sun City

 

Are you in the mood for something reckless? 

Let's drive to Cincinnati

Let's stand beneath the silver arch 

Let's gaze upon the waterfall and climb atop the mounds 

You've had your secrets. I've had mine. 

Dump the bag out 

I have to go through this my own way 

Little girl dogs, the backs of percherons 

We walked in the woods outside Louisville for forty-five minutes 

It was warm out. I felt so much pain. 

A noisy food hall 

Sleeping in ravens' nests

$21 for watery eggs 

Vegan dinner in the Hampton Inn 

Eating BBQ on a white, king-size bed 

They switched up our rooms 

I spilled all my coffee 

My pants stayed damp, and the seat beneath me 

Eleven hours to go 

Riding the waves 

It's four o'clock in Nashville 

You are never to* lost to be saved

*[sic] 

Benediction

 

I must get back there: to that wooden cabin in the woods 

To the open-hearted people 

To circles of writers caring for the earth 

I must get back: to the white-wet laughter 

To glissading on our bums 

To the awe-filled intakes of breath 

To becoming someone I did not know I was capable of being and whom I loved to be 

In the midst of crisis I longed to be pinched again, for the comfort of being held 

Child, this embrace is as big as the moon 

Forgive me

 

I have punished you enough 

Upon such time as a reckoning becomes due

 

Time to burn some shit 

There go the geese 

All I have thought about is how to give 

He didn't even consider it 

Oh the heteronormativity of it all 

I am so mad at you 

I resent your charms, the harder to resent you 

I crave riding a horse in a western saddle along the single track out west 

I've never met a haflinger who wasn't an ass 

So many buggies blinking in the night 

Angry tromping up and down the hills 

Foot soaked in creek water 

Skin-clothes shredded by rambling rose 

Exhausted, finally, near the field of white pines 

Stoke the bonfire 

I release ceding my own power in my life 

I release hiding from the truth 

Baby, burn 

I am so mad at you 

It's making me patriarchal 

I want to say, man up

Do you want to be Adam Sandler or do you want to be Dustin Hoffman 

Are you going to go away again?

Do you intend to keep me on your hook forever 

You could ask me the same question 

I must take matters into my own hands 

Pulse beating in my bicep 

The pros and cons lists seem damning 

Reminder: People can be miserable anywhere 

That river ice, wow 

But the sex though 

So grateful for my girlfriends 

We tend each other while men act like jackasses 

We pretend ours is an inferior love 

I am so mad at you 

I am grateful for the sand 

Gardening magazines and the occasional romance novel 

Crossword puzzles and fairy blocks 

A Swedish massage and a bat-free living room 

Orange, wooden woods 

A squirrel and a wolf 

And maybe a little more daring 

Winter tranquility: $36.99