30/30

Forces of Attraction

In the hospital parking lot,
my husband slips off his tungsten
carbide wedding band. I zip it safe
in my wallet change compartment,
where it mingles with pennies, postage
stamps, and a rare dollar coin. Inside
the hospital, I wait, grading, while his
protons spin and align, magnets clanking
dissonance with the Dave Matthews Band
he selects to relax in the enclosed tube.
My students' assignment: reflect on the
relationship between your life, feminism,
and our reading/viewing of The Vagina
Monologues. I read about families, boyfriends,
girlfriends. I write encouraging comments
in their margins, and highlight grading rubrics:
86, 78, 93, the rare 100. This familiar act
steadies my mind from all this spinning,
this picture forming of my husband's cervical
spine, the bulge between the C6 and C7
setting his nerves afire. These bodies,
parts pedestrian and taboo, when do we see
them, when do we really live in them? When
energy aligns? When muscles cramp? When
nerves sing or sting? When cells multiply,
rampant? My highlighter out of ink, imagination
running wild, the center cannot possibly hold.
And then, there he is, woozy, hungry, and I'm
set spinning, body zinging, alive with wanting.
I slip his ring back on his finger, drawn like
iron filings to his magnetic field.

29/30

How to Prevent an Anxiety Attack

Sleep well, and deeply. Eat
leafy greens and protein things,
hold off on that extra espresso.
Read, but nothing too alarming
(avoid news, social media,
institutional memos, commentary
on your profession). Listen to music,
laughter, bird song, and your partner
breathing (when you can't fall asleep).
Eat chocolate, devour (and/or write)
poetry. Take long, hot showers, steam
scented with lavender. Drink tea, laced
with milk and natural sweeteners (honey,
maple syrup). Practice yoga, both yin
and yang: listen to your body (but not
too closely, or your racing heart, aching
joints, throbbing sciatica become terminal
illness or impend immediate doom).
Walk, stroll, meander. Clear your mind
(but beware the creep of existential angst).
Prepare for the unprepared. Accept what
you cannot control.
Let go.

28/30

"We live in an old chaos of the sun."
Wallace Stevens

Schoolgirls in glittery tops glide scooters
down cracked sidewalks. A yellow mustang
bumps bass and speeds along the curvy
lakeshore, followed by the rumble of seven
Harleys. Everywhere, there's music—laughter
radios bird-song—and dancing—two-step tango
Harlem Shaking. We move back outdoors, drunk
on sunshine after so much indoor abstinence.

27/30

Prom

sparkle strapless bodice
layered tulle princess ball-gown
ladies awaiting


shiny white shoes
jewel-toned satin cumberbund
trying on manhood

26/30

Old Grandma's Tales

"Never trust a skinny cook," says a middle-aged woman
in a green windbreaker and cropped yoga pants, as she clangs
pots and pans in the home goods section of TJ Maxx,
searching for bargains. "Why, Grandma?" A small boy scuffs
and stomps his feet, activating blinking lights in the soles
of his dirty sneakers. "Because they're bad cooks, they're so
skinny," she pushes her cart toward the packaged foods:
boxed imported cookies, single origin honeys and oils.
He marches in place, surrounded by cupcake holders, plastic
bowls, and galvanized steel beverage bins. "Grandma, what
about fat cooks?" But she's in the next aisle, rifling through
placemats and napkins, oval table clothes. He asks again,
shoes flashing as he runs from aisle to aisle. "They're good cooks,
because they taste everything they cook," she says, adding
a bright gingham plastic tablecloth to her cart, overflowing with
decorative pillows, rugs, and multi-pack socks. The boy, quiet,
thoughtful, follows her into a future of women who feed him lies.

25/30

Chicken Shit

Chickens squawk and squat,
legs splayed and beaks snipped,
flurry of feathers inside
the windowless barn, while we
nosh piccata, parmigiana,
barbecued breasts, spicy wings,
braised thighs.

*written whilst watching Food, Inc. with my class*

24/30

Today my American Lit students wrote poetry inspired by literary or historical characters, about other writers, or using creative techniques like N+7. While they scribbled and giggled, I wrote two haiku:

Emily

I trace your dashes,
emulate your white heat
stitch together worlds.


Sylvia

Electrifying:
your words resurrecting
passion and fear

23/30

Happy Birthday, Bard!

an N+7 rendition of Shakespeare's 75th Sonnet

So are you to my thrash as food pyramid to life-force,
Or as sweet-season'd show-off is to the ground cloth;
And for the peace-officer of you I hold such strike-over
As 'twixt a misfit and his wear-and-tear is found:
Now proud as an enmity, and anon
Doubting the filching agenesis will steal his treatise,
Now courting best to be with you alone
Then better'd that the world power may see my pledge;
Sometime all full with feather star on your sigmodiscope,
And by and by clean starved for a look-out;
Possessing or pursuing no delivery
Save what is had or must from you be took
Thus do I pine and surfeit dayflower by dayflower
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.