The Life of a Writer

the life of a writer is desire 
            i hammer into the page 
                        i make up my mind: the streetlight 

is not the moon, but anything can be
            made beautiful under the ease 
                        of my hammer 

i wish you could see that i write in blue ink
            the color of oceans & early mornings 
                        & everything is clear like 

tears rushing towards the chin 
            of my desire. i pen what i’m meant
                        to pen. how deep in love i am 

& how silly of me to spend all morning dreaming 
            about love & not expect my 
                        desire to set me free 

the knives of my fingers tap
            out the notion that if i turn the key 
                        it will unlock.

admittedly, i am foolish 
            about love—a simple yes excites me—
                        ‘cause i know that all that i require will be met

like water meets the tongue. it’s scary
            desire, a small fan at my window in the summer, 
                        a booklight lighting the pages of my life

Related Poems

Bridge Called Water

I wrote hard
on paper

at the bottom
of a pool

near a canyon
where the stars

slid onto their bellies
like fish

I wrote:



I went through
the mountain

through the leaves
of La Puente

to see the moon
but it was too late

too long ago
to walk on glass.



Near those years
when the house fell on me

my father told me
draw mom

in bed with
another man—



From a plum tree

the sound of branches
fall like fruit

I’m older
no longer afraid

my voice like water
pulled from the well

where the wind had been buried
where someone was always

running into my room
asking, what’s wrong?

Paula

Hafizah, when you sleep, a storm suddenly opens its jaw like that ancient dog your neighbors used to beat in front of God and everybody. The wasps duel like prophets and hide their nests in your clothes. Every day your eyes are barefoot. A child could kick the door of you in. So what if you are some kind of Icarus? Sunlight jails itself in your bone. Remember when our eyes were two halves of a locket? And on TV, women were so crazy men had to snatch them by their elbows? You still look like the first time we learned swans were vicious. That year you could carry not even your name. Let’s pretend this grief is possible to initiate when sober. Let’s pretend I am Paula no more. Fact— if you segregate the kingdom by genus you will find the moon bears all the markers of a boarded up fireplace, that the blowflies always find the coyote. In the game of truth, you pick the dare every time.

Directive for Ascension

Let the words we frame and chisel contain
the same language of those before and those
to come. If this moment is a place, let rain drift
to an elsewhere. Let our arrivals rise up
like the Estivant Pines. Let atoms
be atoms. Let song be song. If a moment
gone-by does not return, let the breath of a streamline
contain what you need. If sleep serves
a purpose. If memory divides the night,
let grace braid the strands. Let the lake be an eye
we stand upon and let mind be a way
to the body. If you fear death,
live within a pause. Let the mind envision
its exhaustion. Let procession slow down.
Let the mind become pollen. If sleep serves
a purpose, let acceptance be an orchid,
living only because of the climate around it.
If the world within this world holds us to truth,
let truth be a construct we use to know the past.
If water rises and falls, let it be because
of the moon and its pull. If the frame
becomes more useful than what it contains,
let eyelid divide light, let glass be more than glass.