I Skyped with my sister last night. I said, “So, I’ve been posting poems, old and new, mostly new now, to feed the new blog, you know, but now I’m getting good-anxious for poetry month to be over so I can go back to prose.” But I figure I should have 3 or 4 weekly columns-like, so that it does not continue as it rather started out (or end up like the old blog): just me banging fists, etc.

My sister wants me to write up more movie annotations about anything I stream on Netflix so that she’ll know what to watch. Also, she wants a serialized soap opera, like the kind I used to write in high school (more about that another time). And advice on writing. So, I guess that’s three; how’s that sound? Something to look forward to in May, right?

Later last night, I was surprised to find this in the poetry section of my bookcase when I was searching for something else; I’d plum forgotten all about it.

beJeweled

Black coffee
drinks you down;
my flesh melts
on your tongue.
I find Jewel’s night
without armor
on a bookcase;
a friend gave me this
as a joke the year
it was published/year
I cried a lot.
“Every English major
needs a copy,” she
prescribed & I
perished:

Next year is
meant to be the happiest
one.

(no one should feel this alone.)
A girl writes her final paper
on neutrinos; I imagine them
trying to be strung
together like a narrative
for an intransigent fabula

Collect beads of night
Fill your
skin with the dark weight of the
wet sky. I cannot be
a bead counter, I fear;
magic beads I plant
in the Fisher’s garden;
water them with my skin.
(Wilt they
grow this Giant young,
though?)

Perhaps Robert will
teach me how to knit,
instead; and I will take
to counting stitches
instead of the scars.

(That last line is
just for you,
Jewel.)

***

Poems quoted here: “Communion,” “Saved from Myself,”  “Collect Beads of Night”