She’s writing . . .
“Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not
experiencing complex emotions? I certainly am.”
—Joni Mitchell, interviewed by Elvis Costello, 2004, Vanity Fair
about flowers, pastoral poems— happy fields—
because fuck it, we don’t want to upset anybody—
Her sister sends cards with her spiky signature:
Blessings & Light!
(the words beneath the words:
I’ll cut you and make you apologize for it)
I guess there’s beauty in the con, the clip,
the double shadow in the dark.
Everyday, new holes in the sky.
Dear runaway railcar of love,
knife in the shoe:
What is it you want?
A blanket of sweetness?
Okay, just remember to cover yourself
before the fire comes.
Violence
3 birds, then none.
Find the branch that is open to you.
The storm has stripped each twig-piece away.
So, you think that bare trees
are beautiful—not lacking,
but open to grey, the grey
more important, louder than the branch.
And your new tree:
people think you can’t see
beyond the strippage.
You started there.
Birdless
This time of year
in between 3 and 5,
the light goes.
I’ve made so many mistakes.
I’ve filled states, the state
of Oklahoma, for example, flat,
unyielding fields, split with
no-river gorges, what’s left
of me after the flooding.
OK my therapist would say:
making it large is another way
of breeding self-importance.
OK, yes I say—the bluebird
on the winter branch in our yard
is the ghost crabapple, it flies off
with all my bad decisions and
how beautiful.
I’d like one plain feeling.
More states now, countries now—
years gone wrong. What I didn’t see,
what I went ahead with.
This time of year in between 3 and 5,
the light goes.
We all can be fooled,
my therapist would say,
we all want to believe.
The no-river gorges inside me glisten
as the light crosses.
Is there feldspar in the red deep?
Is time alive and speaking?
I confess the melodrama calms me.
I crawl inside the blur
so I’m not alone.
I’m making it big because
I can’t stay here—
the small night in front of me, birdless.
My heart, birdless.
War Talking
I have seen few things as beautiful
as the body in protest, the arms flying
the blood pulsing in the head wow—
the shaking and saying no—
not today. We are art walking,
we are war talking,
the body in flight from itself.
***
Author photograph by Beth Kukucka
