A Tribute to Anne & Ian

I want any where but here. I don't care if I'm alone. I just want out of this cubicle.
Seven years: some of them have been here, doing this, for seven years.

How do people do this? They say, "Easy job. Decent pay. Reasonable hours."

I say I'm going insane, sitting here staring at the same three textured little waist-high walls that shut me out from the rest of the office. I'm in the back with a real wall to my right, over the carpeted hedge.

It's almost demeaning. No windows, just three rows of little worlds: phone, computer, catalogs. I need out of here. Everybody should need out of here.

Just on a twenty minute call:
"Ok, ma'am, I'm going to spell that first name back to you. V like Victor-I-E-T like Thomas-R Robert-A, correct?"
She says yes and gets frustrated that I can't find her in the system. Exasperated. I ask her who she's shipping to and look up her boyfriend's name. Mark. I find him and the order confirmation.
My, my, Vietra, what cute little shorts you're getting for the boyfriend. Funny that you first referred to him as your husband. (I don't ask. There's a reason she's shipping directly to the man.)
"Ok ma'am, I apologize for the delay. I've found your order here using Mark's name, and just once more, I'm going to spell your name to make sure we've got it correct on the order here: V Victor-I-E-T-R-A and the last name starts with B like boy?"
And then she snaps, "No! It's a D. It starts with a D. Like... like Dead." Well, that's certainly uplifting, Ms. D--. Golly. "I see. Well let's cancel your original order and open a new one because it looks like the original was put in for cheer shorts, not boxers, and I'm sure Mark would prefer the boxers."
"What's the difference?" she scoffs.
"The cheer shorts are for women and fit like softball shorts, and the boxers are for men. Like boxers, ma'am."
"Oh." Yup.
Here's my issue: I pull up her order, and her initials: D. B. not V.D. Learn how to spell your name, Dietra. Are you even listening?
V like Victor. D like David. Not the same thing. What are you hearing?
Delaware. Another state I've never been to, but right now, I'm glad; at least I'm not going to run into Vie--I mean-- Dietra when I stop for lunch on the way to work.

So I send her boyfriend some boxers and roll my eyes; why don't people hear anything?


I spent last weekend in a blackhole, a parallel of lives that were not my own. And I came out on the other side with few lessons learned:

We all need people.
We all need books.

More noise. More poetry. More revolution.
More plumbers and Netflix and hardwood living rooms and Saturdays and lawyers and busses. And housewives and sisters. More Annie, more Ian.

Yes, more busses and streets and birds and mornings and floors.
Less carpet. Less work. More real. More laughter. More youth.
We need more hummingbirds.

("Yes, Ms. Humphries, I know that the website should tell you that there will be additional charges, and I agree that it is unfair as is... No, I don't write the code for the web so there's really nothing I can do." When did I become such a sell out? I should move to the city; this office is killing me. And Ms. Humphries, please don't call me sleazy again. "Yes ma'am, I do know how to spell sleazy... Yes, I did go to college..." not that it's any of your business. "Yes ma'am, I do have a conscience, a big one. My mother gave it to me, and I don't ever take that for granted... Yes, she is a good woman. She gets it from her mother." Was your mother a good woman, Ms. Humpfries? Are you?)

We get stuck. Not ruts. More like dry troughs or run-off ditches. More like deserts.

This is the desert and I am searching for Moses--lead me out, old bearded patriarch.
Or Aaron, too, a man with a voice.

Someone just lead me out, anywhere but this cubicle. Anywhere but Delaware.

"I'm glad your daughter is in love, Adelaide. Summer must be a happy girl, and I'm sure Charles is a lucky man. We'll get this order in and you'll be receiving your confirmation shortly." Thanks for reminding me about all of us who aren't happy-in-love. Thanks for bringing up summer, that season of empty passion. "Oh, no, thank you ma'am, it was a pleasure, and good luck with the rest of your holiday shopping. Enjoy the season!"

Because it's cold, because it's anything but summer, and I'll find a way to be anywhere but here.

We all need books.

More noise.
More poetry.
More revolution.

And all the president's men.

Waking Up

I took a nap for the summer.

I slept in the wake of funerals and baseball games and hot afternoons. I curled up in a nest of cool basement air, of inconsistency and laundry baskets and evenings on front porches in recliners.

I was in a coma of lust for life and other things, a trance of disproportion and an adventure that took me no where in particular, but home.

And home is where I hope to wake up.

A professor told me near the end of last semester that I was in a funk, and that a trip to DC would pull me out. It did something, but I think I ended up losing part of myself in the capitol's old thick air and its sidewalks, which seem to know more than those of Chicago or Denver. The city has been breathing. The people wake and sleep.

When I returned, I moved out of my apartment and into my vagabond summer, the strangest of my life. And though it had some of the best days I'll ever know, I look back on an October morning and laugh: wasted time and useless motions.

What did I read? What did I write? Where did I spend my weekday mornings? When did I run? Who did I love? Why did I cry?

All just to end up where I began, another midwestern girl in a small town with a wish to get out. But this time, things are changing: Maybe I'll go somewhere new.

In the summer slumber, I fell into some directional blindness. I saw nothing of where I was headed until I was there, in everything I did: where I lived, somewhere new nearly every week); when I worked, checking my schedule only the morning of; who I saw, making plans on my own whims and movement. All these things with no intentionality.

And now I feel invisible. Youngest person in the office and all us little women answer the phones: "Thank you for calling. This is Emily. How may I help you today?" followed by either, "Great, may I have your order number?" or "Alright, are you calling with one of our catalogs today?"

What am I doing? Still sleeping.

But the choice now is to be awake and wide-eyed and ready--for a campaign, for a crowd, for a move, a leap, a change. And I will be.

There is no excuse for the post-graduation summer to linger through October morning moons.

So I say, "Good morning Moon," and Mrs. Hill of Indiana puts me on hold to the sound of country music while I'm waiting for her credit card number, then I laugh, and continue, "Good morning Sun."

I'm waking up.

Mountain Breath

Miles out from the foothills at the end of a July light:

look up and west.

Peer beyond those ridges, to the verdant valleys

nestled between weighty hills.

Then, when the sun hangs low,

and the clouds grow heavy, spilling with wet pearls

You will see the earth reborn.

Breath goes climbing and life comes falling, in drops, sheets.

Watch it come graceful and smooth over all,

heaven and creation.

I stood east of the range, and

saw the great land go up,

crawling through golden, misted flame,

reaching into the lungs of God.

He spat life down on the hills.

I watched with the eye He gave me,

and I will tell you—with the rhythm of

the rain in my chest—this:

This is the way of the rain,

the Creator falling with the air.

We Knew Time (and a note)

Inspired by a summer's sleep with Kurt Vonnegut and Jack Kerouac

I had hummingbirds and refracted light for birthdays.
Life was miracles and moments that floated on whirs of backward wings.
At their beats, your beauty swept in me, and pulled webs from atrial corners
with straw bristles that pricked up through my chest to you.

I desired the endless; you asked who could say anything of us.
The stars! I cried: The stars who fall and our wishes
answer pleas for tomorrow, for more days, time.
To the stars, the birds, the colors! Magic and wonder—
Love, I was a child again on logs over streams
in mosquitoless, thin air beside you.

Those June hours ambled along like we knew time, though
it laughed us off—whimsies on the road with some dead language.
I told stories of beauty without pain, of flesh off bone,
and lost my own speech to questions novels asked: If this isn’t nice, what is?

There was Independence pumpkin pie on the bridge, on a night without pops in the sky
because the rain soaked the fuses of all the men in our towns.
We had Broadway bookstores, their paperbacks for our change and
I gorged myself on the scribble of a dream—a world where the rain kept coming.
But it slowed. And the days shortened so the cinematic light
ushered us to darkness on plazas and porches.

Without cover, we watched shooting stars in backseats and coffee shops
with fewer words between us, yet ever more beneath us.
On broken color and falling light, I wished for more time—which you spent with
ignorance of the short season we pretended to enjoy, or did—maybe.

There had been days rich with rain and walks in soggy denim
on Friday nights when I—with dripping hair—would ask you why.
Then there was Tuesday outside the speckled library windows
when the books stayed shelved: out of our hands, dry from the air.

But under hot blues, words of the published men in our eyes went out my mouth
and in your ears as July cried in the dry heat, while we sat poolside and silent.
The heat came on with hurricane breath and desert air,
then we shriveled as sprinklers spat and the backwards birds kissed us goodbye.

The summer drought sucked the color and give of our skin, which
left us to watch as it flaked and burned.
We knew time like the touch of arid rainbows,
ruby-throated, and almost alive.

Hey all, this piece was going to wait to see the blog until summertime, but today felt like an appropriate day to post it. I just hit 1,400 views, and I'm pretty excited about it. Thanks for reading and supporting me. And now I have a favor to ask: share me with someone you know. There are about 50 of you who consistently read when I post, and if each of you share this poem with a friend who you think might enjoy my type of writing, it'll make a huge difference for me. If you didn't know, I started this blog in hopes of establishing a readership to help me get published in the next year or two, and now it's time to move past having only people who know me as followers. Again, I'm so grateful that you have all been reading, and I'm humbled by the numbers.
Easy option to be a huge help: share the link on Facebook. I can't even tell you all how big it would be for me if you each got one more person to start checking back here consistently. SO big!

Let's make it happen. Have a great day everybody. Let's get to 1,500 by tomorrow!