Tori gates in Kyoto

My grandpa told me…

Poetry 
Sweet. Woody. Smokey. Lint.
That is how he always smelled. 
Each visit ended with a hug
That got looser and bonier
Until it got tight and shaky,
Clinging to small moments
As time pulled at the hems of his khakis.

My grandpa told me 
He had dreams about touring the universe
In a plastic lawn chair.
He’d grip the sun-beaten armrests
As the chair maneuvered through planets
And soared through the star-spotted abyss.

My grandpa told me
Two men came to his family’s small home
And told them they had 30 minutes to pack 
Everything they wanted to bring to the camps
Because they were Japanese
And they were dangerous.

My grandpa told me
You should always eat buckwheat noodles
Because they’re good for your heart.

My grandpa told me 
After he stated his name
The farm owner said, “That’s too hard. I’m just gonna call you Dickey.”

My grandpa told me
To “go on” and join the dancing women 
At the Obon Festival 
Who moved in undulating circles 
In white silk kimonos 
Embroidered with red flowers.

My grandpa told me
He found his younger sister
Lying half-drowned, face-down in a drainage ditch
On the edge of the farm in Arkansas.

My grandpa told me 
To wait. 
As I stood on a small beach on Lake Hodges 
With a plastic, neon purple fishing rod
And learned to love fishing
For the waiting. 

My grandpa told me, 
“You don’t let anyone push you around, okay? 
Be tough.
Okay?”
And clutched me to his disappearing frame.

I said “Okay.”
Not knowing that bent reflections of his past
Had allowed him to see the future.

I have to believe you’re here

Poetry, Uncategorized 
Today
We put strings of butterflies
On your bench.

It just so happened 
That a single monarch 
Crossed the trail 
And lingered for a bit
As we made our way down the sandy path.

I wish I had talked to you more.

I wish I had known you better.

You were always kind of like
A half-mom,
A taken-for-granted,
Taken-for-normal
Presence in my life.
Like the sunshine 
Or the leaves.

Things have been tough since you left.
Daughter. Husband. Adopted son. 
Fragmented by the absence.

I have to believe you are here
Holding them all
In arms made of gardenias
And wind.

I have to believe you are here.

Is it karma? Is there a lesson?

I have watched people wither away
Over losing someone who was not half the person
You are. 

I have to believe you are here.

Road trip

Poetry

I study your face

Closely and carefully

Like a fox in the snow

Noiselessly watching the hare

As it grazes and gasps with

Every small noise.

Peering from behind

A slick granite rock.

Amber eyes catch a shard of sunlight

In the cornea

And scream in brief squeezing silence

Against the radiance of the golden hour,

Which only arrives

When it wants

It never leaves;

But rather dissipates.

Until the night

Has breathed her sultry, misty embrace

Onto the navy landscape

With sighing grays and shy greens

Flashing by in the window

As we fly down the Sierras at 60 mph.

Fog thick as cream cheese forgotten

In the back of the fridge,

You watch the road

Biting your cheeks.

Forbidding others to pass.

Somewhere else.

Watching unresolved business

Remain unresolved.

grove of nasturtiums with trippy effect- photo by Tierney Brannigan

Write Drunk

Poetry

Write drunk
Edit sober.
Foamy words
Churning over.

I am sorry.
It isn’t me:
It’s the chemicals,
It’s the hormones,
It’s my damn body.

Lock the door
Keep me out
Hide the key,
Deserved doubt.

I really am sorry
I know that it’s tough
But I need your soft anger
When I’m feeling real rough.

Go do what you love
You do need that time
To be yourself, to escape
To leap away and to thrive.

I will watch the dog
She had a shit day,
Between going to the vet
And begging us to play.

Forgiveness. Forget-ness.
Love is not hippocampal,
It runs, walks, and falls
It wanders and rambles

I am grateful to have you
Somewhere secret I know
You are not the usual
Bone-headed beau.

I really am sorry
And I’ll try to do better,
For you and for us
For now and forever.

single hibiscus with black and white and trippy effect

George Floyd

Prose

It’s May 25th.

George Floyd walks into a convenience store. George Floyd pays for a pack of cigarettes with a 20. George Floyd walks out of the convenience store. He sits in his car with a friend. Maybe lights one up. Maybe just talks.

The store clerks come to his car. They tell him the 20 was fake.

The cops show up. Cop on the driver’s side pulls his gun. Cop on the driver’s side reholsters his gun. More cops show up.

George Floyd is dragged out of the driver’s side. He looks heavy. Clumsy. He is walked to the cop car and packed into the backseat. He is claustrophobic.

George Floyd falls out the other side of the cop car. His head hits the ground first. He is handcuffed. He cannot get up. The officers surround him. Things get lost. Things get hazy. Things get wrong.

Derek Chauvin casually holds his knee and whole body against George Floyd’s neck. His hand is in his pocket. He taunts George Floyd.

Get in the car.

I can’t.

Minute 1.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 2.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 3.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 4.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 5.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 6.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 7.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 8.

I. Can’t. Breathe.

Standers-by are held in place by Tou Thau, who stands in front of the scene like a dog guarding its food. Still, they yell, they plead, they record the whole thing.

Check his pulse!

The ambulance arrives. EMTs quickly load George Floyd into the back of the vehicle. A firetruck arrives to offer extra support, but cannot find the ambulance.

George Floyd is gone.

Minneapolis is on fire. Outrage and sadness fill the streets and surge through the arteries of the mainstream media until the heart of our country finally explodes, bleeds and bleeds with centuries of the honest-to-God wrongs our fathers and forefathers taught us to justify.

We are bleeding and it hurts and it’s what we need.

We treat America’s history like it’s not ours anymore. Like it is something we used to have but gave up a long time ago. These past few days, we have been reminded of who we really are because of where we truly came from.

Greed. Oppression. Racism.

Protests are happening everywhere. Some stay peaceful and some turn violent. It takes mutation and mistakes to evolve, and that can be painful sometimes. Our Instagram-filtered vision has been ripped cleanly from our eyes.

There are rumors that white supremecists are organizing some of the protests. People are leaving their homes. Fathers are sitting by their doors, guns loaded.

It is so hard to un-ignore the parts of our past that make us feel bad. Don’t we know that doing so is the only way to change?

It’s June 3rd.

I sit with a ball of tears in the back of my throat. I feel ignorant and I feel scared. How does this all feel surprising and not surprising at the same time?

I think about my Black friends, and how their lives were probably a lot different than mine. I think about their fear. Their pain. Their unchosen acceptance of the constant discrimination. Born into a blind world that pretends its eyes are wide open.

Unfair. Unjust. Unsettling.

The sheer fabric of the country is collapsing in on itself. It is unraveling and a new story is being woven – a story that is knotted with the darkest threads of our past and dyed with the blood of the oppressed. A true story.

George Floyd walks into a convenience store and changes the world.

white lantana blooms with trippy effect- photo by Tierney Brannigan

I’m Happy for You

Poetry

Jealousy
Boiling
Roiling
Hot in my head.

Spoiling life
Toiling
Rife with it
And I don’t even feel bad.

I should feel good
For you, of course.

But dreams that slip
So quickly and easily
Into another person’s mouth
Hurt. To. Lose.

We were both at the tit!
Both at the spring,
Souls cracked open
Receiving. Chosen.

I did it all “right”
Alright.
So what?

Just because you think
You deserve it
Doesn’t mean
you do.

Your success is mine,
Somehow.
But right now,
It feels like it was mine.

Go back to the spring.
Go back to the beginning.
Go crack your soul open.
Go receive.
Go. Be. Chosen.

dark red and fuchsia geranium with white borders- photo by Tierney Brannigan

Bioluminescence

Poetry

The ocean
She really pulls it out of me
Salty, bream-ey dreams
Of floating on the infinite horizon
A tiny speck
Barely there in the sticky air

Her breath catches my tears
Her voice bleaches out the noise
Her waves, today, rumble with rust
And tonight, crash with a turquoise
Bloom

The microscopic beings come alive with light
As they tumble and crash
Suspended briefly above the whole sea
Before somersaulting into the electric foam

Night shift
Life drifts
Further from the beach

white and yellow daisies in bloom with trippy effect - photo by Tierney Brannigan

Daisy

Poetry

Daisy, you are small, but you are big.
You are rewiring my brain and rewriting my story.
You remind me of who I wanted to be,
I think.

The love is not just there.
It is growing and gnawing.
Slipping into moments, so unexpectedly.
Love is surprising.

I love your little teeth.

This isn’t completely what I expected.
It’s hard to predict how new additions
Will become new editions.

You are here. There is not an “I” anymore.
There is an “us.” There is a “you.”
Thank you for making me learn
How to be outside of myself.

white, gold, and purple iris in bloom with trippy effect - photo by Tierney Brannigan

Quarantine

Prose, Uncategorized
There’s no place like home

Spending all day indoors doesn’t feel as bad as it should. The spring rain helps. There’s no sunshine guilt.

I’ve been watching the birds come to the front porch. A pair of mourning doves perch on the railing. They shimmy and fluff themselves against the rain. Their feathers are the color of quiet hope. Their call – OhhOO…Ooooh…Ooooh – like a porcelain haunt in the pitches of my memory.

The hours slip into one another and 8am is 4pm with a few stretches, distractions, and snacks down the hatch. Days don’t as easily slip into one another. Friday feels further than it did when I actually went to work.

Cleaning has become a new hobby. I smiled satisfactorily, inwardly, as bleach clawed at the inside of my nose during my second EVER toilet scrubbing. This feels like what I should be doing. Or should have. This feels strangely like adulting.