If It Please the Court

If It Please the Court

The honk and scuff
of furniture being

rearranged without
concern for the floor.

Help me with this
table, one of us on

each end. I can walk
backwards if you look

out for me. The chairs
next, to the edges of

the room. I’ll show you
my trick for the witness

stand: push your palm
into the molding here,

see how it folds. This
courtroom is collapsible.

I’ll deflate the jury box
or we can leave it up

and bring in the lid to
make it a bouncy castle.

Your Honor, those robes
were made for dancing.

Here comes the klezmer
band. “Hava Nagila” is

inevitable, it always is.
You don’t have to get lifted

in the chair if you don’t want
to, but you do have to dance.

Text Art: Stormless Life Insurance Building

May your weekend be lovely and stormless. As always, thank you for reading this week.

Not One Mean Bone

Not One Mean Bone

Best thing to do
with hail is to find
a non-terrifying thing
to compare it to,
size-wise. And to
cover your head.
Describe it. Draw
from food or from
recreation--pea-sized
or golf ball or marble.
Photograph the hail
and look at other
pictures of hail from
across the county.
Let’s name the storm,
Doreen or Sandy
or Wilbur or Abe,
and then give it
a pet name when
it gets close enough,
Dorie, Wilby-poo,
Hurricane Babycakes.
It doesn’t know it’s
hurting you, even if
you tell it. It can’t
understand us. Not
one mean bone in
its body, no bones
at all. We can’t stop it,
but we can decide what
to call it. No such thing
as a stormless life.

How You Know It’s a Nightmare

How You Know It’s a Nightmare

You cannot stop forgetting,
but every minute, you remember
you are forgetting. You are letting
them all down. You were trying
to go to class, to feed your dog,
to call your friend. What were
you just doing.

You need to run. You need
to scream. But your energy
is gone. Your voice can’t
climb up your throat.

You are late. The sidewalk
gives you stray kittens,
abandoned toddlers to collect
and distribute. You do not
know how to prioritize.

You never learned how
to drive this kind of car,
all the instructions in German
and a handbrake and knobs
in the dash.

You need to save
whoever you love most.
Even when you save them,
you aren’t safe.
No one is.

Charm Bracelet

Charm Bracelet

When we re-encounter an object
from a memory, and find it exists
exactly as we picture it, why do
we feel triumphant.

The little gold piano on the charm bracelet
my mom was given for her 16th birthday,
that my sister and I played with as children,
opening and closing the tiny hinged lid
of the piano like a locket.

Yesterday, when I saw the bracelet again
my impulse was to slide my fingernail
between the seam of the piano, to lift
its lid. Before I could, my mom told me
The piano won’t open, your sister already
tried. 

Even when no one else is challenging
what we recall, we feel like shouting,
I knew I was right! One part of us doubts.
The other clings.