Autobiography 2020

    

after Madeline Gins

my name, 

Penelope,

belongs to my body

I am 45 years old and have 

so many years to live

another name for me might be doctor

I move according to 

the gravity of the situation

I am composed of contact points

another name for me might be mother

I try to stay in the moment

I think about that all the time

I breathe with conscious force

I wake up with pain 

or lie down with it

wrapping it around me

I married that pain and only death

will part us

let me tell you about 

the world we live in now 

or the world as it was

poetry has always been necessary 

the throat of life

birdlike

stones communicating with stones

but where I am now 

is the end of poetry

birds

are the new poetry

Day three

Today is day four but this is my day three poem. 

Image credit: The Book Connection (Buy The Survivors there!)

Prologue, The Survivors

(for Jane Harper)

The sun goes down and stays down,

The sky unwrapping itself, pure sound.

If you’re going to do it –– She looks up.

She tells him of the weather they’ll be having,

Noticing the birds shrieking and circling the cliffs.

She stands in the shallows, swaying, the weather is inside her,

Lifts her skirts above the incoming tide,

She hasn’t given up on her art, or on wanting to live a good life.

She wants to make things that count, things that are new.

Despite what is going to happen next, dreamlight and darkness,

If you’re going to do it ––

She moves towards him.

You know those nights, you think you lie awake and never sleep?

And then the morning comes, you lie there, blinking,

Thick with the memory of dreaming.

Conjunction

We should be leaving the moon

In yesterday’s year,

It saw too much

And could not look away.

A fresh wind springs up,

A murmuring older than hills,

The veil of smoke has lifted,

Everything new is old again.

Saturn: hold on to your suffering

Jupiter: believe in miracles

Earth: sometimes it's necessary to be in it

Dust: never settle

Moon: Reduce your fears and anxieties,

The rest will help you.