Chirality
I am pushed
(or pulled
or perhaps
I am still)
along this
sinuous
spiraling
system of self
this Möbius
of emotions
this fractal
of feelings
(or fracture
of self or
perhaps I am
still) it is
a pattern a
pattern a
pattern
I must break
before I am broken
(or open to
self or perhaps
I am still)
I cannot dance
these steps I
cannot sequence
these numbers
(or cannot be
self or perhaps
I am still)
yet am I pushed
(or pulled or
perhaps I am still)
along this
sinuous
spiraling
system of self
this Möbius
of emotions
this fractal
of feelings
(or fracture of self
or perhaps
I am
still)

my heart is
flawed by you

no longer able
as it once was

to simply meet
expectations

oxygenation
circulation
purification

I was living
but not alive

until my heart

was awed by you

pas de deux: adagio

you think I
do not see
you searching
for a path
into my heart
your hands rest
against my stony
scars your fingers
clinging, clasping
clawing through
crevices I never
knew were there
(for if I had these, too,
would I have sealed)
you do not see
me watching, wistfully
wondering so
certain you will
quit this path I
hold myself rigid
waiting for you
to abandon me yet
somehow you see
me as I once was
as I would be again
you think I do
not feel you
do not realize
you cannot know
(I cannot let you know)
it is not the wind
caressing your questing
hands it is me
trembling beneath you

spartan

I would lay
my gauze upon
your scars protect you
from a world too bent
on leaching you into
nothing I would
hold you to me
feel you sighing
shifting under me
no one sees you
as I do no one
feels you as I
do I whisper
restraint
even as you sift
into the very
roots of me
restraint
as the bay winds
come laughing
through us
seeing what
I cannot (or
will not)
I am no
longer gauze
and your scars
have long since
healed now we
are threaded through
into a wefting of
me grown into you
you groaning in me
and there is
no restraint as
the bay winds
come laughing
through us
(there never was).

liana

I don’t want
to need you
this way
I don’t need
to want you
this way
or so I would
tell myself
startled that
the vining
I allowed
(youtome)
to decorate
my being
has so quickly
twined onto me
writhed into my
connective tissue
(metoyou)
I am more
accessible now
more supported
yet somehow
off-balance
no longer
independent
or perhaps
no longer able
to shield myself
with independence
even as I struggle
into this new way
of being yet do you
tendril further in
further binding
my heart upon
your heart under
the velvet canopy of
silent September stars
softly I sigh
in wonder that I
need you this way
in amazement that I
want you this way.

496 Steps with a Sapphire Butterfly

My feet know this path
My eyes, these woods
My way so familiar
My presence is hardly needed

I glance at you fleetingly
(because I am busy, thinking)
Only long enough to elide past you
With a half-formed ‘oh yes, that’ (thinking, busy)
Thinking we have only chanced together
(because I am busy, ‘ah, yes, this’)
But you would have us dance together

I am charmed at first
Then somewhat alarmed
You tangle me I fall
Out of rhythm with myself
I am out of step on my own path
Disjointed, fumbling, stumbling into
A new dance I don’t understand
The partnership of the half-formed
‘yes, oh yes, this is what I was made for
Why you are here with me and I with you’
You weave yourself around me, fleetingly,
Never quite with me never quite leaving me
At last I catch your rhythms
I fall into the slow . . . slow . . .
Quick-quick-slow sliding gliding tango
Down a path my feet once knew
My way, now remembered, so familiar
A presence fills the woods and I embrace
Without question the chances of my body
Though I am whole unto myself
Yet do I choose to open
My soul to you my heart
To your heart

Anyone walking toward me
On the path would see
Only a woman, so familiar
A woman hardly needed.
They do not see Psyche
And her sapphire butterfly
Dancing in the August woods.

Kukulkan

At the mouth of the well of Itza
I sing to Chac and dance alone
On Kukulkan face and arms and
Breasts upthrust as the feathers of
His fingers tease me I close my eyes
Against his groans filling the valley
Spilling beyond the little snakes of
My hair writhing as my jaguar feet
Seek their rhythms I am wet
My nipples pebbled against his breath
Spinning red to white to black to yellow
My skin slicked with his sighs my throat
Raw and open at the mouth of the well of Itza
I would follow him into the cenote
Become limestone for his quarrying hands
And the whispering frogs would
Slake their thirst in our puddles.

PRISM

I
was
whole
before
you
wore yourself
into me
before you
fractured my
seamless surfaces
before you
stained me
like cathedral glass
beautifully broken
with light
but now you
are gone I am
opaque and shattered
my pieces no longer fit
and I cannot put
myself back as
I
was
whole
before
you

Blue Triangle

I didn’t look.
Like you I didn’t look;
I turned my head,
Averted my eyes,
Plugged my ears,
Stilled my tongue,
Believing if I waited
Someone else would see
Someone else would hear
Someone else would speak
Because it all happened
To someone else
I never understood
I would be
Someone else someday
Because I didn’t
Look like you.


Posted by Madelyn Kelstein Campbell on Facebook: "On July 29, Arizona law S.B. 1070 is scheduled to go into effect, empowering local law enforcement agencies to ask people whom they think might be illegal immigrants for their papers (if they have been stopped for any other infraction). Being required to carry one's papers aroun...d is an early and common tactic used by totalitarian regimes to intimidate people and keep them in line.
This is not to say that the vast majority of people who supported this law did so out of malevolence, but make no mistake, this is not benign. This is not about the illegal immigrants. This is about legally intimidating people who look different (after all, who looks like an illegal immigrant? Will they be going after everyone who looks Canadian? Or Irish?).
When the Nazis first went into Denmark and announced that the Jews would all have to wear yellow Stars of David on their clothing, the story goes that the King of Denmark rode out the next morning wearing a yellow Star of David. The rest of the population then followed his example. Everyone stood in solidarity with their Jewish brothers and sisters. The Nazis had other markers, as well. They required foreign forced laborers to wear blue triangles. In that spirit, I invite you to Wear Your Papers on July 29th. You simply need to affix a blue inverted triangle to your clothing and stand in solidarity with your brothers and sisters in Arizona.
This isn't about immigration. It is about how we treat the people who are here. Let's take a stand."

woodpeckers echo
ice shimmers into currents
silent falls the snow

Midwest January

We are in the unlovely time of year
When there is only the sooty swabbing of skies
And grimy mounds of snow slump
Against the sandy salted streets
And old men murder their old wives
One smothers her in a sagging stained sofa
Another fills her with a twelve-gauge load
Of double-aught buckshot
And no one notices the shadowy trees
Trembling like Our Lady of Guadalupe
Coruscated in a pre-dawn frozen fog