We squat to eat
 
our seeds, berries, green leaves
on this brushed-clean patch of ground.   
Groomed wild is my hair, long speckled
braids falling past my shoulders

and stirring my dinner in a paint-brush fashion.

We huddle under branched roofs when it rains. 

Our pelts we stole from carcasses
after the wolves had dug in, ate their fill,
left with licked chins: furred torsos
and feet, soft bed, bone necklace,

dried hide covering leggy skin. 

We climb trees like stairs to perch as birds.

This earth is ours and we are wild, 
pushed back from the weight of world order, 
formed lines, vacant eyes, and slack-jawed smiles,  
choosing to breathe instead.  

We are a tribe and we thrive. 

 

i am sally,
no one's dolly frump,
torn by miles that unstitch me as
a severing cut,
of three or four or maybe more. 

there is not him to count the pieces from
head to shed to toes when born. 

the slinged coma i was unfound within
held bits together -- shorn fingertips
and abdomen undone, a reposed torso,
a diorama completion. 

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Yesterday,
I closed my shades at eight-
thirty and went to bed by eleven. 

I dreamt of June, July,
August and September. 

Today, I closed my shades at six.

(07 oct 09)

Pain is the unbearable side 
effect of a
moment hardly known.  And,
reaching into the depths,
I ponder
what could really happen. 
Aloud I groan at 
ill attempts
to exorcise this purest
fraction. 
At the end,
we are left together
computing  
our fatal solution.

you have been gone long enough

that i can't see your mouth.   
one month
and a scattering of fertile days is all it takes
to erase the chalkboard lines of your space. 

twenty years later, 
still i can feel the gangled limbs that first held me
up,
before you slid, lithe and limbered body,
between the bars
of this rusted metal avian cage. 

you are like a parakeet, 
near three decades in my past, that i dream of yet
and soak with salted water just as  
secret scratched patches of earth where i have dirtied fingernails
attempting to let what is troubled rest.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I might read your poems

and let myself pretend that they are about me,
that someone would arrange a dictionary of
flowers and letters and small hands and slugs,
bound-sewn with hair gathered from my comb. 

Just that would forever be enough. 

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Did you notice the slant of light
as steel real
soaked into your skin?

I did, a mannequined form
modeling as life and wife and limbs not torn,
pivoted to seem aproned and lessened
by posed accord. 

The angle shifted from a line,
refracted and finger-trace drawn
along that face
and mirror and spine, until
a truth burrowed to the brim,

metaled askew, not to mend
for food or feet or facts
that conveniently backwards bend. 

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The solemn is long;

distant magnificence dwells  
into our chests, though,

you, rat-a-tat-tat and and follow your path, 
measure life not at all. 

In this science,
infinite is a law;

the corner of low hush and brawl 
warms the eggshells

I, with wax and tricks and tacks and math, 
fix again in the comfort-cold.

The knowledge is false;

a gift-horse and gypsy, forest and trees,
catbird calling leave

us, northern lass and bittered ass,
neither empty nor full. 

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

*something else I cannot capture ...

The sky pushes low and its hands reach down
to tussle our hair. 

The grackles drop as decaying leaves, although not autumn,
a few, then a few, then a few

and covering the ground until
gusting fingers spook them to the trees
away from thawing, wriggling food. 
The litany of song is varied and thick.

A rainbow is reflected
in a shallow puddle of lies.   

Wear a lone sensible jacket
and your widening eyes, close. 

Today's forecast is a continuation of fleeting moments in an SOS code.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Winter is our bittersweet,

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

such is the case with a star, so bright and far away, twinkling, clear, and there every night, moving in gentle, oh-so subtle shifts, as if i tip back in my chair, over days, by arranging an arm, changing weight, which is how i prepare to doze where i write, on my side and curve, curl, dreaming under the glare of screen and light, so stellar, you ever are, like sparks and flames and strikes, though seen as individual atoms, lit brightly, bursting, like fireworks, grasping dark and squeezing it from the night, then pulse a blazing star, to me, burning, ever so, and such, is what you ever are.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I find myself

ever reminded that other people
are living. 
The thought of truly being

alive, 
to move, to breathe, to know:
it is a punch

in the gut
for those of us who are ghosts, 

flat figments,
never believing that there is

a niche
that can support this fight. 

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

In these moments between

thought or dream or sleep
during that vacant pause

I lie on my back in Sweden
hair-plaited
gazing at the sky

wondering why I ever left.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

grief is a black-ink well
i dipped my heart into eight times.
it seeps through and eats
my belly.

there is no anatomy
to fill that hole.

stuffed with cotton,
no one is any the wiser.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

There are not any words for alone --

only tightened gasps,
stifled breaths,
small and invisible deaths

displayed inwardly with brilliant accord.

I stood on a rail for this,
arms straight and wide,
heel-to-toed the distance. 

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

the sweet and welcome stench
of melancholy

stakes two cold steel poles,
frosted,
grasping each a weathered flag -

one yellow, one white. 

standing below,
the wind equally whipping both,
is a sight that does not grow old. 

melanie coolly nags

same as ever,
smooth and bold and wise.

she will be sleeping with me tonight.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

when you want to hold 
your heart's heart  
so much that the lock on your chest

bursts,
and the squeaky hinges of this door

scream,
you cry with happiness and grief
(and grief, and grief);

there is only the earth
and your knees meeting it
in parallel collision

and embrace

and not relief.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.