poetry blitz!

I'm blitzing through my poetry, an odd sensation if there ever was one. I've been having fun working on the manuscript, though I'll feel better about my time constraints once I get a little more progress under my belt. I'm nearly done going through for the first time, making tiny revisions to most of the poems, marking some for replacement & so on.

Kind of exciting that most of the poems only need tiny revisions, actually. It's felt great to read some of these and not want to change a thing, too.

Anyway, once I'm done going through this first time, I need to look at my other poems and see which ones I want to include. I have no idea how difficult that will be. It sounds a little daunting, but what the hell. (Update: it was actually quite easy & didn't take long. Now I have to figure out where to integrate which poems; now that's difficult.)

Eventually, yes, I'll get back to Peggy-O, but deadlines approacheth. In the meantime, I wanted to share this poem from The First Year. I've always liked it. I wrote it about - oh, hell, do I even want to count? - probably 11 or 12 years ago, about a guy I was dating. (And broke up with a few months later.)

Our Hands

A sinner heaves a stone and shatters
my ribcage of glass; you gather me together
hand me a bouquet of my intestines,
crowned by my shaking heart. It is
summer, and hot. My hands languid like
dying flies, brushing the air off my skin.

You kiss my fingertips one by one.
When my fingers fall off you stoop.
You gather and arrange them in a vase.
They are like dried flowers, useless, lovely.
When my fingers fall off you hold my hand.
You talk of days to come as embers fade,
twist, curl in the grate. I shift, settle.
Days are getting cold, quick; nights colder still.

Silence; the memory of goldenrods
fills the room to the ceiling. Winter.
Here ghosts of roses absorb the space
behind my eyes, stinking up the house,
crowding out the Queen Anne’s Lace
I wear for a crown. Flower guides list me
as a common weed. Outside, forsythia and
wisteria bar the door, our watchdogs laid bare.
I pause at the window, sneak a glance out.
God help us both if you hire a gardener.
Been shaking your head for weeks now.

Come spring, you teach me to braid dandelions.
I forgot the long-lost art; you coax it
back to my grasp, silent, jealous.
What I give I give. What you give, I steal.
Cut off my hands if you can catch me at it.
When the snow thaws the dams tense, waiting:
for the point at which they take no more.

You come to me in my mind, empty-handed,
eyes burst open. I clutch at flower stalks,
at my hair; heap my arms full of iris and
orchids, one callalily for memory’s sake.
Then hold my hand as I tell you what my
lonely fingers seek; why I love wisteria;
why I love.