from draft archives

 So Luke rain munir was born June 2nd 2021. After weeks of drought, with Delia crunching underfoot, the elm tree losing its leaves, the rain approached us in the evening. Huge white thunder clouds sat above a black hand that quickly stretched from the East to cover us. Logan said rain. Grandma said yes he's come. It will be here soon. Flights of Fancy, beginnings of short stories or flash fiction, swirl in her brain but she has to work. Someone got to feed these children.

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worn out velour

At the beach waves

Roll up between us

Storm warnings ignored

We plow ages into sand

Assist the unborn turtles'

Incubation by avoidance

 

A group of humans encircle

A singular struggle, tiny step parade

To the water, an afterbirth of giants

Trailing the newborn's journey to sea.

If this were a movie a shot 

Of a hovering crow threatening 

The babe inserted here. A seagull

For the documentary. real

Life is often uneventful, like

The Turtle slips into a wave and

Is gone. Some thing may take it

In the next tide or the next instant

We did our best here on land we

Can't worry about everything 

we can't even see

99))))

f I told you the best poems were never written down period you might stop me in the middle of composing period like last night in Delray Beach period you can't see many stars until maybe the places that they dwell or out of breed right light to the sky make the time barely pass by about at the em driving up 95 to zero hinge period it's not even on the map period every time that I passed never lists the city period I had a friend who lived in Vero Beach one time don't know if she still there period it is directly across the state from my dwelling city period Tampa Florida area nothing play like children want to be we have in one of us choose it talk about about any of the embassy sweets period and the reason why tell about two the party went on and our separate little Anastasi came from period someone's getting pounded it's pleasure in the apartment behind us and three floors up they smoking and drinking and throwing glasses down to the rooftop of that lobby the area kids and many stars and Delray Beach star I see his Mars It's more than each United shines a bright it's solitary light star that I see period that needs energy I told him don't interrupt my song it's for me I told him that sometimes you just had to be there and sometimes the only person is there is the God that we are now yes he said I know it's a play is the thing but I want to preserve it and I'm like I here yeah I mean it would be cool but you know nothing ever comes fruition with me archives especially on the remember with Mark try and record me and the money I would always f****** the second test is actually staying off 95 trying to keep the vibe of life the balcony we all smoke our weed often 95 the lights are bright and shining on all the party and go and a fun 95 the stars are barely alive still really beach at last a Vero Beach sign and it's only 14 miles for some reason I don't think ours is slow down from here request me

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When I was up here in Catawba County North Carolina, just down the street from you here in Hickory. I mean I wanted to and everything but with all the layers that are between us and the way 3D always disappoints I thought it best just to write you a little note since we haven't spoken in a while.

I didn't see Jack and Jenny either didn't even let them know I was coming either. Like they weren't so much a part of my life not even 10 years ago. Everything s e e m e d so much more possible t h e n

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And now I have a forgotten what I was going to say. I was talking to you my daughter specifically about abortion because she has called me a murderer more than once when I and invited her to think of abortion as alternative to having a child. She has three. She has had two abortions. I don't know that she still doesn't think of me as a murderer. After all, hers were different

AAbortion has has weighed on my mind of course. Sterilization as a policy for certain races or genetic effects that people had. For instance Down syndrome Zoar retardation. The auto wrong has me all screwed up. Just to go with it. I would counsel certain people to have abortions. Does that make me want to force them to have an abortion? Oh no, but I would facilitate that choice. In my daughter's case, I have facilitated both choices. So, I must say I'm pro-choice. I would rather she had not made her choice. Because I feel so sorry for her children. But I shouldn't. Because even though I made the choice to have her with a stable job and steady income marriage, she was still raped as a child oh, and suffered the effects of bipolar disorder, undiagnosed, so I mean who made the wiser choices? Neither of us is the point. Very few are wise in the moment. So what do? Why can't we just let women have body autonomy? Not even a question with men who rape. They still get to keep their. If you have the chance and Fortune to survive all the slings and arrows of the womb oh, then you get to birth into this dystopia. So, what you know dicks. I mean that's an equivalent lifelong commitment to a forced action by the state upon someone's body. And voila now we have two, with the forced birth gestation, pertaining to as, a human body.

Which I mean come on if you don't see the human body is being grown in a field but then you are willfully blind to the real ways of biology. Potential life is not a life. You can imbue you can imbue some fanciful characteristics on The Unborn. Maybe it's Jesus. Maybe it's the savior of climate change. All specious arguments. Conjectural. Maybe a Russian soldier in the Ukraine is killing the next evolution of humanity. That is life. Life is messy. It is not granted to any one thing. Conception is merely beginning. Not all seeds take root. If the woman has made herself b a r r e n. If the field has been sown with salt. If the power structure starves out the village. If the SNAP benefits are reduced. If the mom gets involved with m e t h. If that dad runs off and leaves the child. We cannot legislate empathy. And Google suggests that we cannot legislate a p****. LOL thanks for that

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the reasons

0Our good friend Jeanie suggested i write to you to explain . so let me tell you a story. it won't be a tall tale. i believe your daughter and mine are both suffering from mental illness. you want to claim which is worse, and while your daughters actions seem worse for those around her, i would say the alienation my daughter sows is a symptom just as bad.

i am helping you raise your grandson. it's been 10 months, steady, and there's  no foreseen end to that in sight. in fact, i see you making plans to raise him fully, if abby don't get her shit together. i'm not down for that. i can't pledge that, i don't want it. i think it's better for you to come to that truth sooner rather than later. it's not that i don't care for him. it's that i raised my kids and don't want to raise someone else's. including my daughter's kids. but if they were going in to the system, i would do it. maybe. i'd at least take leona, but i'd try to get his parents to take the boys.  because i know what i can and cannot handle. i'm not a good mother now because resentment dwells in the thought of raising a child i did not choose to have.  yet you seem to just gloss0 over how i feel. and i'm sure it's because you have no other choices that you see as viable. honestly, i don't think we are very good parents and it only gets harder from here. 

but what really really ticks me off, is that you take this one sided partnership for granted .  i have to help my daughter in the only way i can, which is monetarily. i can't have her move in with us because the tension of her around you is too much to bear. once again, i am left with a choice of helping your family or  mine and just like the time i let ramie move in instead of my homeless at the time daughter and grand daughter, i am letting your family take precedence over mine. i resent that. i could easily let them move in if you were not here and save myself 1600 a month. i could live on that and still save money. as it stands now, i will be in debt so far at the end of 4 years that i won't be able to retire.  

when i let you know of these financial strates, you lectured me on what savannah should do. as if these were things i didn't know, or hadn't considered. when i told you i needed you to be my partner in this, you shut it down. you can't look at what i've done as a positive investment and you don't want to go in to investing in property with me, despite the fact that for 7 years you've been after me to sell this place and get property with you. you've let me know it's because savannah isn't paying rent and you don't want to do it.  you didn't have a say in picking this out and i'm sure THAT is a huge reason you want nothing to do with it.  i'm sure of it, but i don't know if you'll ever admit to it.

and this fact is the one that's breaking me. i'm helping you with samuel, and i helped you and abby both when she was homeless and crazy with no where to go. you were not gainfully employed and lived with me 2 years before you landed a job and i never demanded rent (although asking for it) during that time. i let ramie move in over my daughter, who was homeless and that bitch left without saying one word of goodbye or thank you. i agreed to take on samuel TEMPORARILY , as you stated, but now you dont want to let him be with raime and fred because of raime's problems. and i'm supposed tto be ok with that. and i'm not. because you want all the benefits of being in a partnership but you don't want to accept that there are sacrifices to make . 

i feel alone. if i am going to feel alone, i'd rather not be broke. i could feel alone with savannah's family here and save 1600 a month. i feel guilty that i have not had  a libido but  believe me, this whole mommy thing has a lot to do with it. resentment is not a good enticement.

that you won't consider that each of needs to make sacrifices for the other truly makes me wonder what kind of person  ypu are. i'm not going to armchair diagnose, i'm just going to say that inlight of your actions, you are selfish and self serving and inconsiderate. 23

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'm driving the city streets home after taking my grandchildren out went City. And I am driving the city streets because I was afraid to drive to the airport through the rain is coming down pretty bad I just put my phone down and concentrate on driving. Which I am doing, I am concentrating on the drive-through which I've hit a couple of walls. But they're not too bad now if I were to go old Tampa I would jump on Dale Mabry at this point. But I kind of want are you sleeping are you sleeping okay I was saying I want to travel down 92 because the lights have been green and 92 is the city of the highway of my youth I remember when I went to visit my grandfather one last time before he died and I took off out of Tampa and didn't want to take the interstate so I took 92 all the way out from Town and Country no I wasn't in town and country all the way out from North Tampa 2 the highway and then when I got to Lakeland I took Memorial. I did not catch one red light. It was a magical night because if you travel the old Florida highways where is it take days to get from one tip of this penis to the other. The thing is I can write in my in my fist up and it means absolutely nothing to goes absolutely nowhere. And he wants to read that s***. You have to whittle it down John, you have to make it 16th and the flash fiction in their eyes but Hillsborough turns into 590 it is no longer us92 once you hit Dale Mabry so really I got lucky that by the airport I caught the lights just to be cut off by flooding. I have more than once been flooded out on Hillsborough Avenue. One time was in my ex-husband's truck husband at The X truck and I ran into a pond. Really couldn't see anything that day. And the phone tells me I'm almost out of batteries and I'm in the T&C now cruising slowly down the street back in his adopted Hometown the place that I got caught and then I got out of

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onight i was confronted with the evidence of your illness. i don't know how to approach you, because this thing you're doing is not healthy. it's not healthy for any of you. you browbeat your daughter like your dad did you. you have to learn when to stop. you said you were working on yourself but you have a long way to go. 

to get to the meat of my issues with you. i was told you will never change. i chose to give you this last chance to deal with your behaviour. but you don't want to. ou're  still the little girl who stole that collar and blamed everyone thing else for your behaviour. i have to say the prosecutor your dad bought off was correct. she had you pegged. 

and i wouldn't care, if you weren't shattering innocent lives. i would not even give you the chance to take advantage of me if not for your children. you know this. but you don't want to prove yourself. 

you say you'll do this, then you don't. you had a week to pack and you guys were still moving out 2 days past the deadline. you didn't give me one fucking penny yet somehow your money is all gone. and i paid in advance for your move. i hope you're serious about leaving in january. i know you can't though.

and i don't want you to take your daughter with you bc you abuse the fuck out of  her. you pile abuse on her head till she's  whimpering, knowing no one will save her. you beat her with your words like a dog. i can't watch it. you have to go. leave her with me. oh but you won't because she's your goddamn slave. i just can't believe what you've become. i thought you were doing better but you're worse than ever. no one reigns you in. there is no excuse for your abusive behaviour and attitude. i have to battle you, because you won't listen to reason. 

nothing you've said you'd do. the porch is not cleaned and you were home all day. you didn''t go off till after dark and now instsead of one bag of laundry, there are 3 on my proch with no evidence that any of it's been done. your slave wears the same dress every day. the same dress. the same fiucking dress. 

you said you'd give me s dollars then x dollars then i can't we got no money. i want the whole thing on friday. all the moving costs. then you get to show me your finances like we talked about. then we talk aobut that. 

you gotta get a job. and an abortion. i dunno what cloud you're living on but that one is a big ass derecho and you need to get your shit together. if you don't , you will not see another penny from me. nothing. i will buy presents for my grandkids but you will get no help. and that's right because this selfish decision is too  much for me. you need help all right. you need to get mentally fit so you can get phyically fit enough so that getting out of bed doesn't wear you out. i see what you do. cook. eat. yell at your kids. stop it goddammit. stop it. get up. get moving. where is your love for your children? it's not enough to bring them into the world, you have to show them how to live. not as your slave, but as people who can take care of themselves. i guess i didn't do a good job with you, but it wasn't from lack of work. i just can't get through to you. everything i say is something to reject. yet, who has bailed you out the last 2 years? who is the one who has a place for you to come to when you're homeless. by your own actions. me, the woman who is always wrong.

well, i reject that. at some point you must take ownership of your actions. that point is when you think you can be a parent yourself. i showed you how to live. you reject it at every turn. you rejected my please for you to get mental help when you were on my insurance, it was all my fault. you haven't changed. i kn ow you're trying with me, and we've been cool because i've been cool. but you're not taking care of the important things. your children. your promises. 

your mental health, your physical health. i want you to. we all need you to. your father isnot a good role model, but you are looking more and more like him these days. sad.

89

0oderrrrri''m writing because since tuesday i've been sad, began crying about it last night. honey sez i need to communicate with you, says to tell you i need more. i don't even know how to say that.  i mean, i don't need more from you in order to survive. i need more from you in order to feel like we're sisters that are connected by more than genes.

it appears i hit a nerve when i called your and brandi's actions over the coco set disrespectful. i don't know what is about that word that sends you over the edge but i can't think of a better word to describe it. i thought of discourteous but that would have required interaction with me over the situation. you didn't disregard me, you thought about me but decided i didn't need to be consulted. i feel that if you respected that the coco set was mine, albeit in your possession these many years, a call from either of you would have been the proper action. you want me to understand that your adult child respected your decision. and i see the respect there. but come on. turn the set into money- any amount over a 100-and the same situation.  would you have called me then? would brandi have? only, money is easy to send in the mail. it's easy to replace. it's not an heirloom. so honestly, if it would have been money as the subject, i wouldn't have minded. la di da. 

i'll prolly delete taht whole paragraph. but it's an important point in the next part of this letter. so i try to move past the fact that you and i don't see eye to eye on this. that's true of so many things but this is the latest. i apologise for saying it out loud. but i continue to say it, so what good is that? you apologise for doing what you did, but don't think it was disrespectful. in your mind. you weren't being disrepectful.  do i forgive you? yes, because it was not your intent to be disrespectful.  i even try to call you first, so you don't have be the one who reaches out. and you tell me don't, you're going to your mom's for the weekend and will call me when you get back. i think you may have even said a day, but i dont wanna open those texts. four days after your return, no call. i cry. honey says communicate, so i write. it's good therapy you may never even see this.

because ima tell you how in forty years i've been waiting for the time when we can be sisters. you have your life and i have mine, separated by half a state.a skinny state. and we see each other on holidays and some birthdays. let's talk about that, yours is coming up. last year i did with you what i always wanted to do. spend some time being sisters. shopping, like we did in our teens, when dad would give us the clothing allowance. our kids have been grown for how long? that's the first time we've done that as adults. that makes me cry. all the missed opportunities and here i am almost sixty goddamn years old. of ocurse i cry, for the family we might have been, despite our mutual grief. ah well. i have to go to work. maybe later tonight i'll have a different viewpoint. maybe you will call in the meantime and we can talk, like we had begun to until i told a harsh truth to your daughter. why do i feel so much to blame? why does there have to be blame? i only feel guilty for saying it outloud, not for having the opinion. and if i can't voice my opinions, are we even sisters?

on the way to work, i condensed this version and decided that the best thing i could do would be to accept that you've always been this way-near then far. or rather, far, then a bout of nearness where you realize how/who i am again, then far again. i shouldn't expect you to call me when you're getting ready for another trip to see brandi. i think that's awesome, you are fortuneate all your hard work has paid off. and you deserve it. you done good. not that you need my approval. so it's ok you ran to midge to lick your wounds, and haven't talked to me about them more bc what is there to say? we disagree, but did autnie agree with you? i just wonder. scott agrees with me, of course.  we gravitate towards like-thinkers. which you and i have not ever been. lol. of course we don't understand each other. 

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It's my last day here gotta pack up clean up get ready to go anyway sitting in nude in the back the backyard just because I can finishing the cigarette I should not smoke inside. It's been a lovely visit. Except for those two times I had to drive downtown in the morning. That made me nervous this morning I was crying cuz I hadn't had coffee or a cigarette. Yeah Vanessa's palpable I got to mail some things today home we bought too much too much maybe someday I'll write poetry again

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portland

It's hot in the amphitheater the kids roll down the hill in various forms Cracker Jack Jumping Jacks and somersaults backwards jumping over you. A little toddler and his daddy come down the stairs slowly and there is no good. The Roses surround everybody and their scent blows across the songs of helicopter and jackhammer. In Washington Park there are many paths to the top. Search any clearing to the east for Mount Hood. I have a fantasy that the helicopter above me is it after me because I smoke cigarettes but it's slowly moves on like traffic in this town who thinks 20 is enough I could take a picture of the crow that follows me he is calling in the direct line across me right now. Once I get up and move the helicopter even disappears. Things wine here in and out up and down the Mountainside. Things wine indeed but they also wind. I'm at the edge of the little picnic area nearest the car exhaust Because I'm smoking. And I cannot smoke in the car. Let me go say goodbye to not good to the east

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At 420 the j numbers start
To be called. I look for
The nearest exit or bullet proof barrier.,A white with a gun.

At 431 a couple of bees are called.mine's 389- but the insects are moving more slowly than the birds.

I may have to move anyway.
A pair of wide eyes breaks
Across my vision when I look up.
Could be that I'm sitting too close to the monitor.they belong to the male of the species
My ring finger is bare
And I delude myself
About the opposition.

Honey says what is said
About men and desire
It's not reserved for rulers
But intrinsic in everyman.
Third time up for air
He's on his phone.

Soon I'll be sixty years old
Sixty years old sixty years old this song
Echoes in my head,like
Voices in this he hangar like
Structure  citizens sit inside
Waiting to pay taxes. Propellers and a small biplane as decor. Security monitors

88888******************

dump the body in the ocean.
find some shark infested waters and dump
the body in the goddamn ocean!!!

the fist comes down in an uncharacteristic display of temper. you know he has flare ups, he's human. but he's always so tight lipped and / reproving father knows best this is gonna hurt us both a  lot but it's gotta be done/ when you see him on tv. this time he looses it.

FUCKIN ASSHOLES. Telling me it LOOKED like him, they were soooOOOO SURE it was HIM, the waterboard confession they got was solid gold FUCKIN GOLD. MUTHER FUCKING SONOFABITCH CIA BASTARD FUCKUP SHITHOLES CUNTSUCKING DWEEEBS. the last word so explosive it took the leader's fist with it, a roundhouse that sent a junior size  basketball sitting precariously on the desk flinging into the framed portrait of an endeared dead president. The ripped face calmed the man down somewhat. i was glad i settled on the curtains. flies are easily crushed.
who is the genius in charge of this operation? can i replace a man twice?