poetry

Giggling Circles

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

I was your age once
and when the teacher said,
Do your homework
and everyone sat
in giggling circles
of middle school talk,
abandoning all ambition,
I sat alone at my desk
and finished my assignments,
never once in three years
taking one home,
yet had a straight-A report card.

Perhaps that is why
I cannot relate to you,
finals coming down your pike
faster than the bullet train,
yet you sit in giggling circles
of apathy, no worries for home life,
your future, education passing
by before you can hold out your ticket.

I wish you could see yourself
ten, fifteen years from now,
remembering (forgetting) this time.
Perhaps you would look back
and wish you had taken
your seat on that train that passed,
or perhaps you will still sit
in giggling circles,
unaware of all that you have missed.

Enough

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

two months and half a day later
we have three grocery sacks
filled with homemade breads,
a peach box filled with apple butter jars,
miniature bags of homemade candy
and an early Christmas gift
for everyone we know.

it could be more, it could be less.
sometimes i wonder if it will ever be enough.

Public Library

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Dear Self-Absorbed Republicans,

Thank you once again
for denying public interests
and literacy
and all that is good
to us lower-class citizens
who can no longer use
the “public” library
that you voted down.

Go ahead and take your
free cards in
so you can stock up on
rated R movies
ignoring the masses
that surround you
and can no longer
check out thirty-three books
a week for our children
to benefit from.

One day,
just like Karl Marx predicted,
we will rise up
and show you that,
despite your measly offerings,
we are still strong,
still united,
and always willing
to fight our way to the top.

Pedal My Way

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with dry, windburned cheeks
and layer upon layer,
my headlamp prominent
as a beacon on my helmet,
i face this winter like no other.

it stands between now and the end,
these hills and my mountain,
and no matter how cold,
no matter the unending wind,
no matter the disapproving glances,
i will pedal my way to a better tomorrow.

Cat

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

December has crept in
on catlike toes, a seemingly soft
and adorable animal
with a wild side
that hunts in the night
and proudly places
mutilated prey on the doorstep
for its owners’ delight.

i’d say that August is better,
but with its expectant mews
and incessant need for
potty training, that baby
is far worse to care for
than a simple shoveling
of bones, blood, and fur
into the trash can.

perhaps in January
i can enjoy the soft purr
of an animal who knows its place,
and we can cuddle on the couch
under a blanket,
cat nip for him,
hot cocoa for me,
and remember how to relax.

Grateful

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

i doubt i can write this
in between hundreds of
papers piled up like
cow dung on my desk,
but i’ll try.

they’re entertaining,
to say the least,
almost as good as
the television show
i’m about to watch
or the burlesque show
that my husband and i
enjoyed last weekend.

but not quite enough
to make a week night
pleasurable, inundated
with extra work, reminding
me just how grateful i
need to be that only occasionally
must i succumb to others’ realities.

Marinated

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on giant skewers
more sword-like than knife-like
they shave off our marinated meat.

we pile it on top of our
quail eggs, turkey salami,
and marinated mushroom salads.

they pop up every thirty seconds
until our plates are smaller than our eyes
and the tastes linger, love in our mouths.

you walk with me across this city, hands in pockets.
we look at all the lights. we stop
for coffee/tea in our bookstore.

the horses are decorated with glittered hooves
and Santa bells, antlers strapped on
and Mrs. Claus at the reigns.

we step into the tower again. the Santa-hatted
door man convinces us to go downstairs.
we laugh until we cry and miss the light rail.

the crisp winter air bites at our lungs
as we walk from stop to stop. images and tastes
boil up within my blood. you keep me warm.

it is three in the morning before we’re home.
the years have marinated, because we never did this,
not once, before we had them.

now it’s more glorious than any gift you could have given me.
was it the meal, the rainbow of lights on Larimer, the show?
i will never know. only passion will i remember.

Music

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the leaves left from fall
dance across our patio,
their crisp skeletal skins skidding
to the howling background hymn.

this same howling harmony
danced across the road today,
beating me down to my bones
as i pushed toward a quieter tune.

trapped inside a fluorescent prison,
i couldn’t quite find the melody
that with a few angry notes
the wind whipped out of me.

perhaps you stand somewhere
on the other side of the sky,
unable to hear the song i sing
amidst the howling, haunting music.

Writing My Bike

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it came to me in the summer.
Writing My Bike:
this should be the name of my new blog.
will i only write when i ride?
will i only ride when i write?

winter’s creeping in
with bitter cold mornings
that make my pedals run stiffly,
my layered legs tight with frost,
my mittened hands gripping
the first wisps of light on early mornings.

He may try, but Jack Frost can’t deter me.
i’ll be writing my bike to the top
of a mountain in May (racing a train),
and i need these legs to pedal me
through everything that will come
between now and then.

November Daughters

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Mythili

Freshly six, your latest
obsessions are your new Zhu Zhu
and the Tangled doll
with hair so long
I had to braid it on day one.
Just like when you were two,
you guard your possessions
as fiercely as a new mother,
holding them close to your chest
on all adventures, theirs and yours.
A year from now, what will you love most?
Will you have abandoned these items
for the latest movie character,
or have given in to your love of books,
your soon-to-be expert knowledge of words?
As I say whenever you ask me a question
that I’m not so sure of an answer to
(my response, in your eyes, a yes),
we’ll see.

Riona

With a long line,
a tiny half circle attached,
a diagonal drawn like a
ray of light across the page,
you have written the first
letter of your name. You ask
for more, and I feed them to you.
You swallow them up and
regurgitate the connected-dot i,
the perfect o, the upside-down n,
and the little a, a circle and tail.
And just as you are not quite sure
how to make the letters just right,
I am not quite sure how I am
going to stand here and watch you grow.

Isabella

Fifty-four pounds, almost half my weight,
you still ask me to carry you.
I reach around your skinny waist
and hoist you up, your arms
flailing wildly (impossible
for you to be still, even now)
as we move into your bedroom.
A kiss good night, a button on the iPod,
and you will listen to the same song tonight,
on repeat, that has played for six months.
I imagine your wedding day,
your groom picking you up in a dance.
Will you play this song, remember its waltz?
Or will I be the only one singing,
“Cantaremos alto, cantaremos bajo,”
until my heart can go neither high nor low,
but stay as neutral as your weight in my arms allows.