the thunder rings so long, we feel how deep the sky is

not every storm
is a circle

you need to read this.

you need to read this

because the quote below doesn't begin to capture its brilliance. it keeps going. because she's a necessary writer. because her writing breathes on its own. because she takes her heart, the heart, and makes it legible. and we need to read that. and i am grateful for her work everytime i get to read it.

"We bury pulleys in our walls and we swing things heavy from them–come here and pull me down. Tug lower the concrete drapes I tack up to digest the light in even tones. It never works, the keeping out–light has a way of making oceans out of the slightest crack in granite. We are not, we are, and not again. A thousand things. I said to someone: befriend those that give, but ones that can also take. You need both. You need to hear it, you need to say it. The people that are all one or the other, be wary. Let them warn themselves. You need lighthouses. You need music. ..."

roots legs stems spines leaves wings seeds eggs

voices swallow voices

i was looking through a notebook from winter 2003, one which includes a lot of colored pencil drawings, illegible writing written over other illegible writing, and a lot of poetry that makes me wince and laugh at the same time. Like Irene McKinney said about her poetry collection, Unthinkable: Selected Poems 1976-2004 at a reading in March, (to paraphrase) "I read these old poems, and it's like someone else wrote them, and I think, 'She wasn't so far off, she got some things right.'" In that spirit, i discovered in the midst of my sordid scrawling, self-entertainment, delusions of grandeur and philosophizing, this gem of a line:



mostly i just sit around
and identify with the cat.





still true.