a sodden, heavy pirouette---
An oak leaf falls. You press it into your palm…the spikes make little craters in your hand.
Years pass,
you are crying
so the world will go round,
the craters fill and the Indians grind their hard, purple corn in them.
They scoop out the meal, mix it with your tears
And feed their children

Little estuaries spring up, geysers from the crook of your elbow
The children pinch their noses
Men come
And build boardwalks
you are rubbing dust into your
eyes, you are
folding spores into your skin
your muddy marrow and your salty blood
Your bitter lips and your spiny ribs.

The souvieners of McCollister

Last night i had a dream: it depicted my dead grandmother, whom which i share the same German legs as her. In the dream she was resurrected.

A few weeks ago my family's hometown of Louisiana Missouri was choked under the muddy waters of a Mississippi flood. The ghost like town inhabited by my family for generations, floating under murky waters. So, alone in a search for something tangible i find as many things in family lineage dies or gets wet, lost, torn, burned, disintegrated. Today, I found in the crevasses of my fathers oak sock drawer, pictures of a phosphorescent New Orleans, of children with beautifully pure faces mussed up by the bayous heat. I found my grandmothers legs, twine and a winter prayer from a congregation my father seeked in Louisiana for i guess guidance. This is what small towns do, lull you to a Huckleberry coma until something dies, your mother, until the floods hit again and you have to find a sin city to scoop you up, get you melancholy and drunk and parade you into a humid state of loveliness, where nothing has recognition, where everything is blurred by the past, your subconscious and the absinthe you drank, with the reefer you inhaled, with the fat man you took pictures of. Until the loss of your town and your mother doesn't hurt and spirits become steady in your skull.

A summers prayer.

Not My Family

Your sons are spoiled rotten. Their blond heads are matted with tears, running and dribbling over their eyelashes to come and rest in the dimples on their cheeks. Each time you unwrap a shiny new plastic toy, all you will be rewarded with is gnashing teeth and flailing limbs, kicking, beating, biting, filling the air with electricity and panic. How dare you let me into your house? Each time they call you, "Mommy, Mommy!," your jaw clenches in fear, screaming back at them. You look at me apologetically, gently nudging them from the room. The finger paint coats us thinly, in my nose, my mouth, my eyes. They have become smudges in my eyes, little dark whorls on the lawn. Your husband tries to keep them out of the laundry chute.







"Great, I'll be back Saturday, Mrs. ______"

declarations----spring of last year

you used to wade in the brackish estuaries

you used to lick the resin from the trees

you used to be the desert

you used to jump and the milk in your belly became butter

you used to sing a song over and over

you used to have bark and branches

you used to perform for the wild animals underground

you used to feed the roots

you used to cull the fools gold from all the mountain streams

you used to fuzz all the newborn peaches

you slept in the hoof-prints in the snow

"Just a biting bug been following me from town to town"- Ma Rainey

Virginia bluesman Luke Jordan

It's when your soul starts melting inside and slides out of your eyes and ears and nose like spoonfuls of hot oil. It's when your heart starts beating a mournful epitaph in 12/8 time. It's when your saliva becomes a harsh gin, burning your throat and shooting out between your lips while you howl and wail the same bitter line over and over and your fingers pluck the guitar strings till the blood's pounding at their tips.
Or it's a playful beat crushed into wood floors with quick-tappin' feet. It's spit-shine salutes to the underground minstrels who puff on the top of moonshine jugs. It's an 80-year-old mama who uses the grey hairs on her head to count her chores and whistles to her rough-kneed kids.

True blues music has passed, but that doesn't mean the left-over proof of that period of strained heartstrings can't be enjoyed these days. Sometimes, when my mind's hurting and my head just feels so heavy it might drop onto the floor and roll away, or even when I feel like a rugged, southern farm girl who justs wants to put her feet up and close her eyes to the tune of pure enjoyment (which happens more than you'd think), I'll listen to those recordings and the only action you'll see me perform is the slow nod of my toasty head as the strums and grumbles send me soaring.

My blues pick of late-
"Cocaine Blues" by Luke Jordan

barbapapa

by jean-robert cuttaia

Kneecaps and harriet the spy.

There is a lovely thing that happens when a young girl reads Harriet the spy she become increasingly aware of the cuts and scrapes on her, awkward silences, beautiful urban objects and commodities, she becomes a walking sarcastic goddess whom has interest with curiosity for the world. J'elle aime.