You keep ignoring the Post-it note
telling you to defrost the freezer.

The sight of the hardened
dollop of toothpaste

on the hardwood floor in the hall
is a comfort:

Out with it, damned
and captive white spot.

Your habit of meandering
from room to room,

rocking back and forth,
is another. No light shines

from the lamp you forget
to plug in again.

Stray blueberries roll beneath
the fridge, never to be retrieved.

You can’t recall where
you got that tiny notebook—

the one with mostly illegible
scribblings in your handwriting

on torn and crumpled pages,
discovered weeks later

under The Complete Works
of Emily Dickinson.

What do you mean by “fire
up the culture of keep going?”

It’s a comfort to give yourself
permission to release the need

to remember anything.
You have nursed the wounded

owl long enough. Let it fly.
You say you don’t keep everything.

Shelves of blank books filled
with contained chaos exist

to call you are a liar.

Still so many messages
left to thaw.

1.
Buy a used dollhouse
at an estate sale & pull
the window blinds down.

2.
Carve the initials
of your first love
into the pantry floor.

3.
Purchase a cactus
& place it
in the living room.

4.
Cut a hole in the roof
& patch it
with pure tree resin.

5.
Take the house outside
& drop it in a bank
of freshly fallen snow.

6.
Leave it in that spot
for the rest
of the season.

7.
Borrow a tiny globe
& magnifying glass
from your neighbor.

8.
Drag the weather-worn
house inside

(it might take several trips if

the structure is no longer
sound).

9.
Place the tiny globe
in the tiny library
with all the tiny books.

10.
Tap it with your finger
to set it
in motion.

11.
Let it spin.

12.
& spin.

13.
& spin some more.

14.
Pause it with a pin.

15.
Use the magnifying glass
to read the location
the pin pricks.

16.
If it’s in the middle
of an ocean,
buy a houseboat.

17.
Get ready

18.
to change

19.
your life.

20.
Repeat
if you don’t like
the results.

21. Bonus Step
Keep moving
till you know you know—
I know I did.

I wake during the 25th
hour between happy and
witching. I peer out

the window to discover
it’s that 5th
season again. Locked

in a tiny bathroom
in New York City’s 6th
borough, I open the fire

escape

door to feel the breeze coming
off the 6th ocean’s surface—

not frigid, not too warm, not
recognizable even with my 6th
sense. The Earth’s 2nd

moon is waning, and the 6th
Great Lake is swallowing hard
1,000 miles in the 5th

direction.

The 10th muse forces me
into a spoken word chant

that lasts beyond the 13th
month in a karaoke bar
on the 3rd bank

of Pittsburgh’s 4th river.
The 13th juror knows how
to make me confess to being

neither guilty
nor innocent. A 3rd
verdict rises

with the 2nd sun.
I count 12 dimensions
and turn off the light.

“There’s really only one ocean”

appears on the 5th
wall in glow-in-the-dark paint.

light. Your power
returns in stages
till you hear the heat
as water begins
to bubble forth.

You forget how
to sit on a stoop
and watch poetry
appear between
the gaps. A sidewalk

in need of repair. You
still have a purpose.
The way you used to
go out after dark
into the black-out

night. The way you embrace
the time before civil
dawn now. Walk
the streets,
counting all the broken

lights. Your power

so entangled in the cords
you unplugged to survive.
Tunnels or skyways—you must
decide which way to travel
all over again.

You own the moment mortgage free
now that the land is so possessed.
Store the car; rewild the park.

You own the moment mortgage free.
Riding in the backseat of a white Jeep,
we thread the day’s closing remarks

with gold. You own the moment
mortgage free. Your smile’s
up for renewal. Remember the bees.

That the land could become

so possessed is the gold
thread to the day’s closing
remarks. Remember the bees.

The land is so possessed with us
riding in the backseat of a white Jeep.
Your smile’s up for renewal.

We store the car, rewild the park, stop
riding in the backseat of white Jeeps
when your smile’s up for renewal.

We stole the car to rewild the park
with gold thread as another day
closes on our renewed smiles.

It’s the sound of a bird’s cheerful
chirps coming from the cattails,

and a mournful cry
from another hidden one.

It’s the unmistakable
quack of city park ducks,

and the angry screech
of a car speeding around

the sculpture garden.
The silent stares

of turkeys hanging
around the unfinished trail

I sneak onto. And the call
and response of geese

as they swim in the lake.
It’s the surface

quiet of woolly bear caterpillars
centimetering along,

and the leaves that scratch
the sidewalk in a warm breeze.

It’s the true hush

of a dead woolly bear
on the pavement.

And the silence of drained
pools now that they’ve shut

down the fountain for the winter
to come. The stridulation

of late-season crickets
marks the morning.

And you, dawn,
I swear I can hear the ocean

in your breath.

I am honored and excited to have my poem “The Oar Interferes” published in Issue 22 of Consilience Journal. The theme for the issue is “Waves.”

Please check it out here.

You can also hear a recording of the poem here.

The way that ash tree in Loring Park
becomes the first

to release

its yellow leaves. Let
the breeze save you.

Imagine it’s raining. Be grateful
for the scattered clouds,

and pay your respects (choking
up) to the dead toads on the trail.

Bless the morning crickets
come September.

Let go of the disgust
you feel for the residue

of salt and gnat carcasses
on your arms and legs.

Instead, praise the spider
that has spun her web

between slats
of a white picket fence.

Savor the moment you realize
no motorboats disturb the lake.

I’m excited to have my poem “Relief” published in the latest issue of Tangled Locks Journal.

to ask the fog
to stay
just a little longer

to remember
those underwater kisses
or to spell her

name backwards
with a cracked divining rod
in the sand

and to keep it
a secret when it breaks
open