“We are composed of agonies not polarities.” ~ James Hillman
ARRIVAL
We got here so quickly, this dumpy little spaceship with its worn down industrial grey carpet.
Sure, can cross time. I can still see moon dust in the shape of boots prints from previous guests.
Back again, last stop before going home. Another stint-rota of repair and stock listing. I always
feel short of breath until I adjust the oxygen to humanoid levels, but of course it will take a
couple of sun cycles to even keel spread throughout the ship. I have to look at my watch to know
time-flow as the sunrise-sunset program hasn’t been switched on yet.
Dingy-dark and cramped, my space-mate puttering around, putting his temporary nest in order, a
few graphic novels, photo of his dog- why we can’t bring Tuffy is beyond me- and the coffee
mug that has both our names inscribed on it.
I feel like hitting the loop-way and going for a jog, one benefit up here is the low-gravity allows
me to run on my two bad knees.
As I start my laps, I notice the ceiling is getting lower, slanting in towards the floor, low enough
that I can’t get through without crawling, which freaks me out totally, my claustrophobia held at
bay this far now breaks through and so I turn back only to notice water gushing behind an
exposed pipe because of the separating wall-ceiling.
This is a problem. I turn back, yelling out, “Adam! Come, you’ve got to see this, grab your tools, I’ll inflate
our climate-shift garb.”
Even now in this potential danger-danger zone, he’s putters. Doesn’t trust my alarm bells, can’t
blame him. I’m a high-strung earth mama far from home, fresh from the nap-tube, jumping to
worst-case scenarios.
As we head towards the anomaly, an unknown corridor strewn with neon orange chairs catches
our attention. As if some raging teens let loose at a high-school bust-up. We follow the
overturned furniture into a larger room filled with artificial light emanating from a humming tube
below our feet. There are few other humans in beige coloured paper mache jumpsuits, silently
shuffling about like seniors in an Alzheimer care home. Carrying trays of colourless food that
have that heated up in a microwave smell. Further up, we see spiral stairs coiling up to an
enormous window; we head up to see the view.
Someone has turned daylight on and I notice my breathing has become less tight. Amazing what a little psych-technology does for the lungs.
Still, it’s obviously not real. Flat, bird-less, and oneof the park trees is on the blink, leaves going back and forth from Girl scout green to autumnal
crimson like an ole Eat-At-Joes diner sign. I look down and notice a mound of cement, like wet sand, and bend down to touch it.
My hands, as if by memory, mould it into a palm sized egg. Adam is looking at me and says don’t touch it,
could be dangerous. But something in me slithers, a wave in my belly, a feeling of... happiness?
A few handmade and mottled orbs later, a much larger pile of clay eggs surrounds me. The
colour of beeswax and smell of frankincense fills the ship which is slowing breaking apart. The
egg-mound continues to expand, becoming a hill with trees and animal creatures that crawl or fly
and I want to name them; Bird-Horse-Turtle-Dove-Cat-Cow-Snake…
My belly rumbles then quakes, and I am filled with a pain that becomes a great yowling. I look
down and see a giant mountain bursting forth from between my legs and Adam is on knees
saying; push, push, hold.
PANDEMIC
Upstairs in my bed, now our bed, he lies dreaming. Coal-hot, fever-visions.
Climbing the stairs, I hoist my bad knee and lonely pussy, carrying electrolyte water and ice-
cloths. His olive skin, now grey, coiled silver locks once gleaming with almond oil and
frankincense, now a snarl of empty nests.
I lie next to him and listen. His breathing a shredded wind, a tunnel underground. Medieval,
plagued.
This is the turning of plot, this where the husband lies dying.
After days of febrile in and out of consciousness, he comes to, just for a moment, with a
message.
The wife-mouth trembles and spills out joy-words of I-missed-you-so-much and where-did-you-
go and don’t-leave-me-here-all-alone. There is only a single breath-moment for him to mouth, “I love you.”
And whoosh, he is gone.
RUNAWAY MEET-UP
And the Mother says Utah, where you were born.
And the Daughter-now-Mother says Goodbye Texas, adios mama Frida and papa Abraham.
The exact midpoint between She and me the now-Daughter is a diner.
An in-between-Queendom that pours free coffee refills all the day long.
The Daughter stirs Mini Moo’s into her java once-ebony-now-toffee-tone.
With limp wrists she hands back the menu while Mother ordered liver and onions, medium-rare with scramble eggs, moist.
It was oft the same weary boned waitress, her eyes reflecting time lost, vacant as a parking lot
on Christmas. Mother warns if the eggs are overcooked, they’ll be sent right back.
Coffee arrives and a-where-we-left-off prompt from the daughter would resume the Mother story.
The mother asks, not wanting to know if the daughter is going to eat, as she stirs teaspoon after
teaspoon of powered saccharine into black. An upside-down tornado forming.
Utah, the daughter said while remembering California.
Of how her Lady Godiva mane
was shorn and dyed colour of Never-Found-Love.
Yes, Utah, the mother repeats, where you were born.
REBORN
I love you; the Daddy mouthed through the only tears the Mother ever saw him cry. The daddy
was so happy and the Grandparents forgave both because, well; the Daughter looked like Abraham.
POTENT ANGEL
A dark bride, a desert bride, a firstborn and cast aside bride.
Feet and hands painted gold with clay smelling of fresh rain and mushroom blooms.
A silk-talking woman, a velvet-wood woman whose winter light splits her open, filling her
with ice-salmon, lemons and mint.
She hears the sunrising over the sea, feels the glint of peach and pearl in a blue god’s eye.
They are guiding her as she sonic wing-seeks a forest to rest in, a single tree to nest in,
but there are none near.
A barn will have to do, slanted rafters overlooking pig-babies, born and torn from...
NATIVITY
Adam kneeling, repeating thank you, thank you to my belly and he catches our daughter.
Baby girl lights the sky with a dream and the eruption of our gene pool. Volcanic blooms unfurl from
her scalp and she silently mouths I love you as my body bleeds into the sea, forming land now a
beach, and our sunburnt shoulders fold over and look for shells.
Charwoman whose lightning strikes the high watch and turns the boat around.
Asking above themselves, is this a dream?
Where is the ship we sailed upon (or flew?) Was it a movie, a Netflix of distraction?
But the unrelenting heat wakes them again, and it is coming towards at a speed that collapses
time. Burning down empires, furloughing minds, melting net worth.
Everything in Mother’s path becoming ash.
Adam rises, with first-born daughter swathed and cradled, runs toward the sea, so thick with
steam hands cannot be seen in front of unbelieving eyes.
TEENAGER
I damn-burst tears and say it, and I say it, and I say it:
I am pregnant. I am a fast girl. I am a harlot, unclean, used.
I am not a Virgin. I am not married.
I will not go backwards.
Growing up without a map, no way to know where she’ll land, thinks the mother.
Who says, “I see a sunbeam has spilled through an unlocked window and filled your room like smoke.”
Dark Side of the Moon steadies the daughter, her face pushing past the teen door, her waxed
wings melting in Mother’s glare.
She throws her next sentence like a dart. “I left a note for Daddy, on the seat of his car.”
Mama says why didn’t you tell me first?
PAPA
Daddy was a soft-throated man, a never fully-opened-throat-man. His lips would purse almost
like he was going to whistle, but would part just enough to let out a cartoon melody.
Deedle di dee di dah di dee, good morning, goo-ooo-od-mo-orneeening, you slept the whole
night through… singing our breakfast is ready and the sun is up.He was singing in the rain; I was swimming back to shore.
MAMA
Daughter asked, did she go to Heaven?
We welcome her to the boneyard, mother replied.
And the daughter mouths I love you through tears held back so long they are dust, silent as a
desert father.
Mother answered a question with a question; Are we beholden or enchanted?
Habits become habitats. We have fallen. Fallen far away from the trees.
Yet a cunning monkey survives deep inside thee.
They both sense a rustling, a thicket of amber waves concealing two hungry eyes revealing a
pattern.
Mother shouts towards the unseen, “how dare the world be other than what we’ve been told?”
JUDGEMENT
Are you trying to grow out your hair again? It won’t look good long, cut it short-short-short. For
frizzy hair, like ours, it’s just easier to wear a wig in this weather. I keep mine under our bed.
Let’s order, I’m starving.
Liver and onions, liver and onions, liver and onions. Bile weep, bile weep and the daughter pours
mini moos into the blackness and says Utah, where I was born?
Where I grew strong. Climbing. Cartwheeling. Bicycling. Menstruating. Each spiral I made
upward was reflecting her little brother's downturn in your eyes, Mommy. His muscles shrinking,
his spine contorting. His body withered as mine blossomed, his inverted tree to my kundalini
rising…
Mother said remember when you wanted to be a nun, I had to remind you that we are not
Catholic.
Looking at her own saccharine tornado forming, she continued. “Stop chewing your nails,
you’ve bitten them to the quick. Who’s going to want to put a ring on that hand? You’ll end up
marrying a truck driver.” She continued to stir.“Mother, please, where I was born and where he went underneath you mother-wing as I reached
for the sun. I just wanted you to see me, celebrate my pleasure which seemed pinch against his
bones”
Mother looks up “I just want us to be friends. I never understood why you told your father first?
He always said you’ve got hybrid vigour. And I just wanted you to stop doing ‘it.’
You were always bringing home exotic men.
Muzzy, muzzy, muzzy I said, Eskimo kisses are best and they won’t get you pregnant you said.
Daughter lungs still inhaling brother dust. She looks out the cafe window through this layer of
bacon grease just in time to see a red-hawk open her wings, taking flight, a little blackbird
squealing in its craw.
MIDWIFERY
Adam collapses into her arms, his mercury-winged-calves useless when there is no mountain to
climb, no damsel to rescue. The daughter floats full of milk, nipple bursting in her mouth, boob
raft.
And his arms around her neck as she breast-strokes further from the burning shore. A boat
appears made of waste-wood. Crafted by gull-tears and lost whale songs. Rickety is a word.
She begs him with her eyes, one-armed with daughter, the other extended towards a lover. Use
your legs to climb upon us. The ark between becomes a guiding star and Adam takes the fruit of
this offering so they can rest and drift in the mist and dream-clean their nest.
FEVER DREAM
I am a bride, a royal-bride, a virgin-bride, a menopause-bride.
I am wearing white. I am wearing starlight. I am wearing a glass filled with milk.
Beaded with antique lace handed down by hands that swell and crack.
I am walking down the aisle. I am walking towards the queen.
She wears all the colours from all the places she has travelled to.
She wears rubies surrounded by clay. She wears emeralds polished by hollowed earth.
She wears pearls torn from oyster flesh, scent of warm seas under her bosom.
Emeralds alongside turquoise and body trade.
Tourmaline torn from mountains separated from rivers now dry.A limousine is glidings by holding the maiden bride, a pregnant bride, a bride whose hair rests in
her lap twined round her henna’d hands
A golden fawn brown, soft as corn silk, sweet as milk with roots caw-cawing raven black
Racing down her backside, caressing her thigh side, shoulders and cheeks along the roadside.
Her eggs travel inside, down womb-tubes sliding into mouths opened bird-wide
See how we fool death?
See how we spend our nine-lives?
NEXT LIFE
I am a Sleuth, a middle-age Femme Fatale and an abandoned mom- parked outside a strip club.
My freshly tinted cover-the-grey-paprika is wrapped in a cream colour scarf contrasting my
ebony cat-eyed sunglasses. I am elegant, a mystery-ladened disguise. As my noon-day pupils
dialate in dim, smokey light, I fumble for the apple wrapped in Kleenex at the bottom of my
white leatherette, in case I get hungry. Camera phone on the ready.
My childhood desire for dress up merged with sleuthing has come in handy, for now I am spying
on my own daughter, Eve. The plan; find a corner table and wait for her to come on stage and smartphone
click my way into an intervention.
Beautiful Eve, smart and athletic, gentle and daring. The phrase woman-girl comes to mind. It
was she, even as a baby who brought healing to my sad little heart, as I patted her dry or warmed
her bottle at 3 am, it was she who turned my tears to laughter, my hunger for love, ever full.
Eve’s tomboy girl-body, lean and pale as a moonbeam, was stepping on the micro-stage to share
the spotlight with a shiny metal pole. Barely covered in a black leather bikini or rather a weblike
creation which made looked more superhero than stripper.
Walk this Way the jukebox plays, Eve obliges and immediately pulls herself up and over, legs
where arms should like some holy multi-limbed Hindu goddess. I’ve never understood where she
got this kinaesthetic knowing. The ability to climb a rock wall smooth as onyx, to swim in
glacier melt lakes or run long, hot miles without a shade tree in sight?
Her cowboy hat tumbles off and her hair falls from grace. Her hair, my father’s hair, the colour
of sun through a dust storm. One in a hundred heads, locks of fire that burn the eyes right out of
Moses. It lashing out then water-falling down on to black linoleum, polished thin from a
thousand different bodies, all moving towards the not-allowed-touch.
Men gathered around and I am further shielded from my daughter’s eyes. Facing the sweat-
stained and weary, cigarette tinged fan-hands offering coiled and beer-scented dollar bills. She
doesn’t seem to see anyone but is moving to some unseen reptilian realm.
I am mesmerised by the beauty of her current, the rage moulting into desire softening even the
most puritanical part of me. I cease to be Mother, she, no longer Daughter. Why did this ever
offend me?
This is a sacred place, a cave wall encoded with spirals, an offering, an undulating prayer.