Ferry

Breathe
Yes,
Hurry up and sleep, we need
the pillows
A liminal start three nights
in a row, remembering
my Ruby slippers, clicking.
The way home is easy,
but somewhere back and back
I forgot the cradle
of my diaphragm,
its rocking

Now, my pedal to metal,
I can barely pause to tell you this...
last night I remembered
that crucial thing I’d forgotten:
my third arm,
or that I’ve always spoken Cantonese,
or that my flute master
is still waiting for me, twenty-three years later,
in her mahogany parlor
It slapped me awake, bright and insistent,
then hopped back onto the ferry, disappearing
with all of its rigging, into the mist

Across the night sky,
my mother rises
at 3 am, stumbles around the house,
every moment, now, a ferry she has just missed
trying to remember what she has forgotten,
crib sheets tucked into her sleeve
with the names of the children
who cracked open her rocking pelvis
seven times,
this boat too, taken back
downriver, this life, an overripe berry,
dissolving, on the tip of her tongue

Lung Ghazal

Eighteen thousand times a day, I breathe in and burn
without ever questioning: “Why breathe in and burn?”

I’m too busy to ask silly questions—or to
take a moment to thank the sky. Breathe in and burn.

Some days I feel cellophane-wrapped, crazed to inhale
for gasping, as though two flows vie: breathing, burning.

Sometimes I cough up a ziggurat built by germs,
a fever of tribes who all try to breathe and burn.

Or maybe out the window, I see white herons
in their patience as they hunt, eat, fly, breathe and burn.

The substances that sustain us all kill us, too.
The factions of ours bodies fry, breathe in and burn.

The tasks we take in coming to vibrate are to
oxygenate and oxidize: breathe in and burn.

My name is Ari, and I’m addicted to air.
Let’s all share a collective sigh, breathe in and burn.

breathe deep

in the sucking depths at the tickertape
of my lung sacs, the little bitty ends
that are like clouds on mountains
inside me

in this interchange where the soup
we walk through daily
turns into little cup holders
and cups of air in the soup
of my blood

at this little cash register of oxygen
a convenience store counter where
product becomes energy
(and people buy cheetos relinquishing small
green spotted cloth squares)

at this matrix
of creation,
where we make peace with our ocean origins
no more womb-gills to replenish us
in this ruddy suckup
inward, i acknowledge
my defiance of ocean origin
and my terrestrial, upright
upstartdom

with this deep breath, i praise my defiance
my land-living, earth-stalking strangeness

and my body glories as it
passes the little coffeecups with lids on
of prana at the corner stores overloaded with
micro super grandes of air
carrying them through the blood
to the thrilled cells and
their vitalizing membranes

this is a coffeeshop of air
i cannot resist,
not too picky, shade grown or organic,
pastoral or cityfumed,
a requisite addiction
life-giving, animating

this

deep

breath



Scooter Cascadia

Request

Pardon me, ma'am. Would you mind too much
if I took one deep breath
of your fresh laundered blouse
that smells so sweetly of the sea?
Or if I buried my nose into your damp hair
so recently rinsed and shampooed
and clinging to your neck in lovely ringlets?
I've been standing in this crowded commuter train
for three long hours now
in tight black shoes
with nothing to read but
a red computer manual
and could use a little reason
to live.

This Week's Prompt: Deep Breathe

My friend Noël coaches me to write in shorter sentences, that to read the writing of run-ons is like listening to someone speaking who forgets to breathe. It is exhausting. Only unlike conversation, we don't know they've stopped listening to us. They just close the book or click on a different link.

Let's use this week of Sun moving into Aquarius to breathe in the water-bearing circulation of the air realms.

Artwork by Melanie Weidner - Listen for Joy

Write    about    or    write    as    if    

                 spaciousness    and     breath     

         filled   the    lung  


    of    your    voice    

         and    

            the    breath   of    your 

                       pen    -    How   can   

                           your    writing   


                               billow    

              and      breathe     deeply? 


                                        Tags:      poem,    breathe