private justice, love and the public

This comradeship experienced through desire
The broad chested climate movement boys, espousing feminism with hesitant machismo,
The tough jewish brunettes. loudly in salvaged button-downs and queered up dresses.
The tough nods of racial justice leaders, quivveringly unattainable across coalition table.

I've written this poem a hundred times before, love is justice in private
lusting for that better world beside and inside me. The work we need to do, in the flesh.
Do not be afraid of the details- without objects of desire we are only ideology.

I launch in to nervous pacing whenever I hang up the phone, mutter to the world- I love this work. I love this work.

Four Months Later

In the moments after moments I notice I've been happy,
and think, gently, "that wasn't so bad"
usually on my bicycle,
usually with friends
in the evening, in the marches, in the go-around, paint still on my hands.

What changed:
the final line
is every slightly less confessional, heartbroken
slightly less about you.
I feel good in the cold sunshine, confident.
and then I catch myself
silently telling you so.

Yelling to you:
I don't need you
Waiting for the day I won't bother to yell.

This is also in-between: not clinging and not over.
Filing away all thoughts of togetherness under "next october"
one year later.
far enough away to hope that when I get there
I won't want you any more.

Both Sides Up

on the subway and in the mornings, turning over the idea of no downside in my head,
I felt it easing in to place at last today.
landing both sides up
on my bicycle, finally picked up from the shop.


yes:
transition: taking time for progress, control. . neither bad to or from good.
yes:
longing:choosing the bravery to desire instead of wait.

What we need is not to be loved but to love.
Not to be needed but to do.

the day

The two borscht day
when the bus arrives just as you decide to take it and it stops in front of
the first of two of the three best remaining restaurants
of the territory of your ancestors

the friends you've been waiting for years to find,
 just the right clever things, the second bowl
the boys game, your elbows on the table
the table's  a load of shit.

careful- a high on your power day: don't speak to fast.
landing smoothly backwards through the crowds next to the boy you like with his friend.
 the buzz under your elbow on the table, the glow of the day, the smiley face,
 desire transferred sideways
: )
!

The glow of the generations you know and the ones you're recalling
the glow of cheeks in the cold,
what is being said, really? when
everything-for a time- lines up just right.

The audacity to have desire unrequited

I challenge myself to look in the mirror while I'm fucking myself in the bathroom during the meeting
This, too, is called loving the world.
I challenge myself to fuck myself in the bathroom
in the bathroom during the meeting
looking at myself in the mirror, in the bathroom during the meeting.

Long heartlessless, crudely, ruthlessly, in every direction,
When I suspect non-reciprocation, in spite of the fact.
desire with your whole heart from a fleeting idea, a conversation.
the service to choose to want it the way you think it oughta want to.
saving both rage and strategy for politics
the bravery to want the world daily with all the pounds of your body.
The bravery in the face of loneless
to decide the world knows it wants me to want.

Not Alone

What was different this time:
I was so
not
alone

so much

and though lonely
and scared at times
in this period of in-betweens
It is only hours,
most days,
until I disprove this.

In every way the work asks you to commit in this world
you are not alone

Archive of a memory's release

I rolled around in the grass, in the overall shorts of the past three weeks.

flipping over myself and squeezing my hands - to affirm

that they were the same hands who had made this work, and who had lived all the moments before this began.

It seemed impossible,

Like the time my friends took me to their sweat lodge

I could not fathom that all of my memories happened to this same body

that was slippery with sweat and dirt.

But on the hill, fully comfortable

un-phased by the sprained foot I'd attend to the next day.

I had done it, i'd done it, my body had been through the days 

that first brought the impossible incrementally closer to being,

closer, relentlessly, daily,

until it was done.

I wonder now with worry, this ideal-

Release tied to achievement,

That first time I remember feeling so completely abandoned

that one one else had chosen this thing with their whole heart

if it would be done than I would do it,

I would birth it.

and I had, it was done.

worst dream

I woke up and was glad it was cold enough that I'd layered all my quilts on.
thick and heavy shield between me and the world.
it was still dark.
I didn't know how to move in the world
still with fear of it, baffled and scared by the thought of looking at my phone.

I could not think it through until twelve hours later,
the day consumed with an uneasy desire to talk to my mom.

I had been in an unfamiliar apartment, but not unlike the one I grew up in.
lavish, clean, my mother loading and unloading from the washing machine.
Fighting with my family and waiting for them as we packed to go on a journey
a journey to another floor.
finally I huffed off and left without them- both impatient and in in legitimate haste to beat some unknown threat.

I travelled up some flights in an unassuming elevator without them
sped from floor to floor- both familiar and unfamiliar.
The angles of my vision shift rapidly, like speeding through the spaces.
one was a rec-hall of sorts. a series of carpeted, friendly instituational rooms.
 kids playing everywhere, I knew them.
I mediated small fights but slipped from situation to situation.
to protect myself
some ticking time bomb, that feeling of urgency, of fear.
The last floor, the top, was at once indoors and a sundeck
like a resort, all of these vibrant young folks lazing about in bathing suits, posing dramatically, complaining:
"oh this place. it's a phony load of shit. it's an awful place. a prison, a fucked up trap, a tragedy, a scam"
the sense of creepy grew, and
I decided to leave and go downstairs.

At the very first floor, an empty glass lobby, small, clean but not ornate. two doors with long concrete ramps.
On the left, the exit: "once you leave you may not come back"
On the right, the entrance: "once you enter you may not leave"

I walked out without much thought, but then
watched two very small latino children skip out, thoughtlessly wander past the exit line.
They cross the street and I see a boardwalk, like coney island.
The children giggled as they crossed  and in an instant
careened over a cliff edge that suddenly appeared
I could see them split open and bloody, immediately dead.
Their mother was only a few feet beyond the exit line when they flung themselves over the edge
she broke down in tears instantly on the floor.

The last image I saw was this woman on the concrete weeping, collapsed to the floor.
My mind's eye turned to the entrance that she could not return to
and I woke up.

5pm Procrastination Poem

art days are a slow inch in which I am here to do just one thing and do everything else.
the sun sets and I've barely begun- But small tasks are tasks done tooQ
Mierle whispers: it's maintainence, Rachel.
and she's right- but the truth overlaps itself in contradiction:
Rachel whispers: it's fear, Rachel.

Not Being Stressed looks like laughing, but not being done yet looks like stress.
I have finished my poem for the day
there are no more excuses
it's time to begin.

Winter

 the spring signs of completion such an annual relief,
that it as if- never again! as if winter is through.
Then that one day when just a few leaves fall,
and we remember it's coming.
then that one day the clocks turn and we realize it is already here.

graciously the darkness does not corrolate complete with the cold
on these days, light streams in in spite of harshness.
The warmth from the space heater so much warmer for the cold yearning.
This is what we remember fondly, the joy against sadness, love against struggle,  this time of year.

the turning over

it's the fear of the thoughts that might come walking alone
but arriving joyful.

it's the forgetting you were yearning for purpose
in the time that you have found it.

it's the feeling invisible
then having calls for help returned.

it's what turns over when I forget I am waiting
and yet- how to forget?

a list of two

It's unclear how this will play out

Your synopsis winds me-

not spoken to but cc'd, as an aside

in case she may know someone who may need...

and yet clearer than what you've said before:

couldn't work.

...unclear how

this will play out.

I keep saying to myself:

my father

my father, my father

neutrality now weighted.

My father, this ache.

To suspect how I feel is permanent

even if you climb out of this-

the break in my voice will still cling to the words.

I am floored by your email, because the evening had felt so pedestrian

Sunk in to my work on the concrete floor.

Present in the drama of my own chosen world.

there has never been something so hard to keep in mind- I've reminded myself

so painful we cope with them by putting it aside:

a list of two

the climate

my father.

my father

When Starting Again

that I have done it before is not proof

that I can do it again.

I took it for a given that
the acts that are most part of us
are what bring the most fear.

I'd use this to talk myself down:
who wouldn't be scared to move
from draft to finished
from idea to form?

but people started tucking their chins in when I confess I'm just so nervous
their heads tilted slightly, their slight step back.
not what we'd expect or want-
and I, similar stunned, when my artists friends crooned
ooh, I just wish I could just be paaiiinting alll daay

I'm left to feel that this is not a common space I've found
stunted at my own work, cycling through gracious and smug and frankly terrified
each time, feeling like that I have done it before is not proof
that I can do it again.
But enough times now that I can peel away to feel
some assurance that this is how I know I'll feel.

empty poem

Under my blankets, alone:
. this is the place where you are enough. you, by having a body, have the right to exist.
This threshhold balls up with other monotonies
seizing at the cold every morning walking to the subway
picking a skirt to wear by the dresser
packing lunch, brushing teeth.
staring blankly at the screen.

Permission, over and over, to take the time to wallow.
compelled to be empty, brain glazed. I let myself. I give myself permission, usually,
 before I just give in.
it doesn't always feel this way, but  it's felt this way before.
presence is an anamoly, any excitement is proof.
Repeating, against the larger picture
you are holding yourself together.
you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay
you're going to be okay.

The very first chip in

I'm not going to tell you how mad I got,
now that I know that you were sick.
I said to the mirror but at you:
you know how worn down I am to being let down by you
and it did not exactly dissipate but I also did not brew.

I quipped this would have been much harder two years ago
careful not to slip in the satisfaction of too much gratitude
for being the reflection wall of learning to calm down and wait.

I was floored by the thud of how real it felt when the cheese balad came on
on that old mix tape, and crooned.
I think it's about forgiveness
even if you don't love me anymore.

Farbringen

Six blocks from the subway and half a block from home I realized I was happier than I'd been in weeks

Amber says that all things are the same in that they're completely uncomparably unique
and today was one of those days, the room of folks who nestle in to our diasphora in a way that's just like me.
We said: choose community over money. you need community to survive.
I've said that many times before.
Yet, on the subway I thought, sadly- that's it, Rachel, this show this is all you get.
and once I saw I was beaming I chided myself and realizing: no, this is all you need.

For Nighttime and Morning

I decided it was time to get back the morning,
so I set the alarm two nights ago and I got out of bed.
the cold will not deter you from loving being alive
the snow will not deter you from loving being alive.

There is no one at the end of the day who's going to tell you if you did it well
There is no one in the morning who's going to tell you what that day is for.

But these days those last moments before sleeping are the sweetest,  you can say:
those things may be true, Rachel, but this moment you know is for being right here.
 lying  in your body is also living, and you will love the world by doing this.
There is no one else to draw the line for you
about what it means to love.

Coat of Paint

I painted the wall of my room sunshine yellow
and the other three a deep orange-red.
I painted my new table top turquoise, and the salvaged legs blue, then my housemate's step ladder magenta and lime green.
I painted the back of my chest of drawers orange, and I
 built six new shelves.
one burgundy, one gold, and the last four yellow, pink, teal and peach.

I hadn't thought of the words "a fresh coat" until
I was mostly done painting the drawers of my old desk purple.
in my sweatshirt and pants now crusted with tones.
and I thought about the night we frantically piled the plastic tins from the warehouse in to my car
and the carload in to boxes, and the boxes in to my hall.
waiting for some next time we spoke confidently of coming.

It was the last night that felt that way- purposeful and clear.
Staying up much too late and laughing at our own haste.
I knew, by that point, how rocky these months would be.
I didn't know how many, though.
I was too tired to look very far ahead, and in retrospect perhaps I couldn't have beared it.

In august I spoke longingly of this christmas- the first week I could imagine no one would call me to ask a favor.
By then I might have cleaned my car. And I couldn't fathom that I'd feel nostalgic yet for urgency, for weariness, for the feeling needed, though of course I would.

I've been going slowly all month, and maybe this time I learned that you don't have to push for the pushing- it will come.
But it's not just about the heartbreak, now, it's this feeling at sea.
 I wonder if I'll ever forget how temporal certainty feels right now. The holding myself together,  embarrassed to relay on recent concrete memory. the now starting over, the fresh coat of paint.

poem for whole productivity

a day where all I want to do is trim the dead skin off the soles of my feet
a night where all I do is sit in warm water until my fingers prune
and somewhere
in the accumulation
I grew

This year

The space you need where sadness is okay
The space to step outside yourself and be larger than, those multitudes.
This year, what would it take?
and every year, for everyone
what would it take?