I did the April Challenge again this year, and had so much fun. I'm not going to post all of them, because there are just so many. But I wanted to post a few of the ones that I'll be working on throughout the year in the workshop.


April 4

Well

I watch the pillow as it curves to contour the shape of your head.
You breathe: shallow, shallow, deep. Shadows spill onto your cheeks,
seep through your pores and meld with your face, your fluid
face. I peer into the well of you; stark, black
nothing assaults my eyes. If I drop my offering, lean close
to the edge, and listen for the accepting 'plink',
you will surely swallow my change
with a silent tongue to voice your hunger, always the need
for more than I can spare. You have stripped me naked—
bare of myself—and when I search for my voice, I find yours boring
into my ears, and when I dig into my flesh I unearth your bones
buried there, where my intimates once were. You have absorbed me
the way you consume the darkness, the way you suck
in everything alive, everything not alive. If only
I could siphon myself out while you sleep.
But you never really do.

April 6

Phantom Pain

this pain is not a pain you flinch at it is a pain you beg
for like you pray for an oasis when the impending night
is a winged scavenger that circles above you waiting
for the desert floor to clutch your belly when you see it
there you throw yourself at it let it soak
into your crevices float in it and gulp it greedily until
your thirst is sated but when you choke and cough out sand
you understand that it was a mirage all along and that he
was already swooped off by the vultures and they left
you because you were just a rack of bones strung together hollow
and rattling you have been dead for such a long time

April 15

Explosion

After the blast you're stuck, half
under the rubble, numb and deaf.
You try to cry for help, mouth's too dry.
No one's around anyway: your eyes
flush out the dust, and you notice
you're buried beneath chunks of your own
walls, the ones you built brick by brick to block
them all out. Your right hand's pinned
by your side, still fisted on a list
of those who wronged you, left hand over
there on the floor, fused to the detonator.
Your face stares up at you blankly
from a charred photo. A nasty little bird
perches on top of your nose,
and sings a song. You can't hear it
over the ringing in your ears,
but you know the words to this one:
whadyoudo, whadyoudo, whadyoudo?

April 20

Bleached

When I answered the phone and spilled the whole
Clorox bottle onto the load of clothes, the fumes caught the oh
in my throat and choked it off before the hello? hello? I thought
this didn't happenthisisnot
happening, and I saw you hunched over
the sink, chasing a shadow
from your chin. The blade nicked your skin and red drops hit
cotton. You crumpled the soiled shirt into the hamper. And then
I was pouring soap. The phone rang. Your arm thrust up
from the bowl, reaching, reaching. The agitator
rolled. Tried to lift you out, but the fumes, my eyes,
hands slick. Lost my grip. And you
screamed, I screamed and—whump—shut the lid. I couldn't watch
the water bleed.
When the spincycle stopped, I retrieved your shirt: white
but full of holes, just like your lies.


This next one is for my grandmother who passed away on New Years Day this year.

Alice

Today, for the first time, I held your hand.
I'd wanted to do so many times when I was young,
but the pine boughs in your back yard seemed easier
to reach. To me, you were one of the mystery
novels that lined the wall, and I searched behind the ivory
of your smile for the tombs of men who'd drowned
under the silver crest of your waves. Still, in your voice,
I'd hoped to occasionally hear the warmth of cookies
that you never baked, or to see, in your eyes, the flight
of a hummingbird. I remember the ceramic castle
that sat in your curio cabinet, a magnificent kingdom
overthrown by armies of dust. Perhaps I thought
you were the queen, and I was an unworthy peasant.
But today, for the first time, I held your hand.
Your smile was grateful when I brushed
your gray hair, and your few words spoke more
than a library of novels. Then your eyes began to explain.
I've known your name since I could speak, but
I've only just begun to understand you. Why
are you leaving, Alice? Alice, please don't go yet.

Alice Mae Harder
2/24/1922 - 1/1/2008

hehe, good ones - I liked the one for your grandmother best

I liked the Alice one also Michele. Sad how sometimes we don't get to know people until we run out of time isn't it?

For my Aunt Linda Kay who passed away June 11, 2009.


Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I? -- E.Y. Harburg

Uninvited, You

Out.

Because. You are not
the last taste
my tongue wants

before I sleep. Not this
time. This fake air, your stare
through glass. My lungs

may crack
before our ice.
I thought, as a girl:

breathe in

enough helium, float
above it all. But gravity.
In me. I was heavy

always. Then you. Us.
Boulder on top of rock.
And I knew. Hell,

I know. I'm lighter
now, petrified—my
insides—but not scared.

Our daughter has your eyes, your
chin, your dark hair,
but she listened when I said:

breathe in;

shut him out. She did, and she
is a feather, white,
the wind can carry up

and up up up up. I taste
her sweet, unheavy. She breathes
easier than me, so much

deeper than you.


I will miss you, Aunt Potty-Mouth.

Beautiful poem Michelle, where did "Aunt Potty Mouth" get her nickname?

The whole "Aunt Potty Mouth" thing came about after Rita when she let our whole family stay with her in Alpine for 2 weeks. She kept swearing, and Celeste was a little younger then, so she'd make a deal of it. A sharp breath drawn in, widened eyes, or a little "uuummmm!". So LindaKay finally said, yup. That's right. I just said the D word. And the S word. And if you'd like, I'l say the A word too, for kicks. Just call me Aunt Potty Mouth. And so we have.

Here's some background on my Aunt.

She was married to a very strange man who, thirty years or so ago, thought the rapture had happened and that they were left behind. He locked the family in the house for 2 weeks hoping Jesus would come back for them.

He was one to stuff religion down your throat, but he didn't walk it. He made some sexual comments to me at 15 years old; he was a religious perv.

So our whole life, the thing we remember most about Aunt LindaKay was her foul mouth. She did it to get under his skin. She would make sure he was listening when she'd let one fly.

She wouldn't allow talk of religion or God, and all these years I thought that she didn't know Him.

She's had health issues in the past few years: gallbladder, kidney stones, hardening of the lungs (pulmonary fibrosis maybe?). But she got along okay. Last month was her birthday, and her daughter took her to Vegas. When she came back, she had a routine hernia surgery and everything seemed fine, but a week later she was in the ICU with organ failure, her lung function only at about 30%.

She called her siblings (my dad and his other sister), and they went to San Antonio to see her where she told them that she didn't think she would leave the hospital.

My surviving Aunt (Pat), told me about her eleven day stay in the ICU with Aunt LindaKay. This is how she tells it:

We were in the room when the doctor walked in, and they asked us to leave, but she asked us to stay. She stopped the doctor before he said a word, and she told him: I know that you are doing the best you can for me. And I want to tell you that I will fight as hard as I can. But I think it's my time, and I just want you to know that it's not your fault. If I'm supposed to go, then I am. I'm not scared. I know where I am going. I know who is waiting for me.

The doctor and his aid both walked out of the room in tears.

After that, she never said a sad word. She had us all in stitches. The female nurses would come in and she would tell them to bring her the cutest male nurses they could find, and she would pick 12 of them, have her daughter snap pictures of them, and print out a Calendar to sell in the Gift Shop. Those nurses would bring a guy by, and even long after the point when she couldn't speak because of the tubes and the oxygen masks, she would give her opinion. She wasn't scared to turn 'em down if she didn't think they were hot enough. She'd ask for a pen and pad, and she'd write an X or a check. If she wrote an X, she'd immediately wave him away, but if she gave him a check, she'd motion for him to come to her bedside and have her daughter snap pics.

And when those nurses, male and female would come to check her vitals after she slipped into a coma, a few of them would leave teary. One of the guys had to apologize and leave the room. He sent a replacement, and came back later to apologize again. One of the female nurses said that they aren't supposed to get "involved" with families of people in the ICU, but that she just couldn't not leave them with her contact info and asked them sincerely to stay in touch with her and let her know how they were doing. She said that she felt she owed it to LindaKay to keep an ear open and make sure the family was okay.

She wrote out word for word what she wanted the funeral to be like: NOT SAD. Happy. Celebrate my life and my going home. Listed pallbearers, listed songs: ThreeDogNight (the Jeremiah was a Bullfrog song), Willie Nelson (Highwaymen). And she requested that I sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Her last conversation with me over the phone ended with a laugh: she told me she didn't want the Judy Garland version; it was outdated and sad. She wanted a newer version, maybe Patti Labelle. I told her I was just a little ol' white girl, and Patti Labelle wasn't exactly "modern", but I'd do what I could. Her last words to me were: "D***, child. I had faith in you." and an attempt at a laugh, to which I heard the nurse scream at her to put the darn mask back on and stop trying to talk.

And her funeral was beautiful. When asked what they thought after the service, several older ladies said: I enjoyed it. Oh, that doesn't really sound right, now does it? I am not glad she's gone, but the service was just a reflection of her: light hearted, fun, eccentric, and a little naughty. She made it clear to the pastor that she did NOT want him to use her funeral as a scare tactic to force people to join a religion. But she wanted him to make it very clear how important it is to have a relationship. Not just with God, but with each other.

There's a bit of a backstory to the poem, too. During her last couple weeks, she wanted those closest to her in her room. We weren't allowed because the doctors said the less people that came around, the less chance she'd have of infection, so immediate family only. Well, her husband, who's been giving her a hard time all these years, started griping at her while she was laying in the bed, making ugly comments about how ridiculous it was that he wouldn't be getting her monthly government check, accusing her of passing notes about him when she was actually writing lists of pallbearers and songs. It stressed her out. So she booted him out of the room, and spent the remaining time at peace with her daughter, her sister, and her brother (my dad).

Wow, great story Michelle I'm not sure I'd want to go like that (tubes, masks, even the cussing part) but it sounds like she celebrated life as long as she could and had her family celebrate it as she left. Great story