And now I will read my poems.
I have a cycle of poems.
And I like the word cycle because it makes
me think of a circle of course.
And it seems that most of my poems circle around each other
in some way as if I'm always asking the same questions
and sometimes getting different answers often not.
And one thing about the poems.
The first poem called "Scatterings"
has been divided up into short parts
and will indicate when a new group of poems begins.
I'd like you to consider all these poems if you can
as stories being told around a table.
Perhaps each poem a person talking to a loved one.
"Scatterings", one.
Upon my return to this world of melted dreams and car
horns, lumbering days of clean and sober times, the odor
of creosote a wall of certainty and summer skies,
I cheered more than I was.
Empty breaths are children.
My wish to see both of them as stories
I told, each longing in their eyes
the one I've been trained to raise my fist to.
Mirror image of my hands reaching for the clouds.
It took all I had to see these visions as wounds, bandages
unraveling from oozing skin.
Other women's eyes bruises that reappear with the watching.
You nodded to me for hours.
Our old love songs led our daughters down into sleep
I try to slow my own breathing.
You held me like a bowl of rain as everything
we knew changed form.