Worst Fear

Remember the summer

I swam to the end of the dock?

Worked my way up, life jacket-less,

despite my crippling fear of water.

Went out every day with

someone to watch from the pier.

Swam a few more feet each time

until I reached open water-

a place where I could no longer

touch bottom, and the dock ended

so no one dry could grab me

if I slipped under.

I waded there a moment or two

in suspended animation

a fantastic combination of

buoyancy and bravery.

Do you remember?

But this is not that summer

and the moxy I worked up

is gone I discover as I jump

in from the end of the dock

skipping all the shallow parts

near shore, the slow start that

gave me courage before

and here I am screaming,

flailing, struggling hard

no reachable sand beneath me

and in their panic

drowning people often

pull rescuers down with them.

5 O'clock (another revision of Bravery)

I wonder how you feel

around 5 O'clock
when you come home from work

if we take the joy out from you
and drag it across the kitchen floor

Send you retreating into the old
rocker, battered, to sit for the rest of the night

in front of the three-channeled television.

Like the strange failure of waves from
the broadcasting networks to the
flimsy antennae of the tv,

your signals are never strong enough

to decipher. A little fuzzier as the

night goes on, until they are entirely

scrambled.

You switch off and lock yourself

away behind a bedroom door.

And one thought reruns in my head,

a consistent 5 o'clock syndication:

One day you will drop dead, and I won't know a
Goddamn thing about you.

lazy girl

it seems I have hit a bad case of writer's block

for now I am just home, hanging with my baby sister

drinking coffee with my mama

and reading a whole bunch:

"A Long Fatal Love Chase" -Louisa May Alcott

"Mexico City Blues, 242 Choruses"- Jack Kerouac

"You Come Too- collected children's poems"- Robert Frost

"Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"- Wallace Stevens

the words will come back, they always do.

-AMI