&

April 2009

KL

homemakers

we will build
we will build a house
of stone or pine or ice
or whatever they will let us have
whatever they do not want.
the heat between us will
melt the house
burn the house.
we will warm each other
together on the forest floor.
we will build ourselves on the forest floor.
after they take everything
we will have what we built.

GT

Breakers

“I’ve been waiting by a road to another town for you to reappear as diamonds.” – Simon Andrews
Only a frayed desert to build on
where magma once mussed the dunes
and burst isthmus after isthmus into the cove,
the sand popped with heat and slicking
the basalt in glass drapes to the sea’s fold,
a broil of steam and salt in the air.
Now the ground is rilled
with lava tubes, bulges
scale through the earth,
miles of knuckles, bones and pipes
with only sorrow for marrow,
sinkholes trammelled
where the world caved
into the melt under the weight
of houses, houses – why risk
houses, chance development
when the islands are hollow-hearted?
How can we hope when our cliffs are soft
and we’re full of collapse, the breakers inside us
singing erosion    shining with crystal    telling their symbols
bolstered by omens    moaning with mistrust    rusting like houses
shushing our cries    raising our hopes    spreading false diamonds
when there’s nothing precious for miles, nothing
indigenous strong enough to stand on.

KL

Some small history

we’re halfway up
kneedeep in history
eyehigh in reverie
we’re telling symbols
like house ground sea
like bitch queer dropout
balanced on a graveyard of whalebone stays
handcuffed to boys rent and beaten
lit in glitter of gutter riots
there is nothing as solid
as the weight of bodies
under our feet

GT

Dear K,

I’m not sure about this.
I got a birthday card from my ex.
‘Hope your 30th birthday / is extra special.’
(That’s an exact quote.)
I liked the use of ‘eyehigh’
in your poem – it’s so relative. We
went to the Galapagos together.
I didn’t expect you to get that, though.
What should I make of your poem –
this process – it’s all so impersonal. What do we
leave out of history? I had a dream
and woke up with the lines,
The dreary humdak lopes a closing loop
through the woods / chainsaws buzz
a bird song, and this:
“armchairs torn apart.”
I want to add:
like queer ground
like dropout sea
like bitch house
there’s a solid weight
at the end of the rope,
you just have to hope
because you can’t be sure
it’s not around a throat
when you pull.

KL

Hush

I wanted to start
Dear G,
but G is an ex of mine
and another ex moved to San Cristóbal
and another hung from a rope just after turning 30
so it was all just
a little too…
because I thought I’d left that out of my history.
but I never have words
in my dreams
(funny thing for a writer)
it’s all
driving to the moon : playing bass in a punk band : befriending a t-rex
sometimes they even roll credits at the end.
enough, wake up, we’re done.
crawl back into the dropout sea.
but what I’ve been trying to say all along is that
maybe I don’t care if the rope is around a throat
as long
as it’s
not mine.