Thumbs
(a snapshot, now landlocked)

A sparrow:
If you want to write words as they
are, you have to see everythin
wrong.  Still the hermit crab on

the windowsill keeps rearranging,
two volumes of Sophocles.

James registered – too salty to be anything
but sarcastic, though it sounded
nicer against air molecules.
Five bodies sharing one shower have

that effect.  A tall stubble with a lip
ring (is that what made the
accent?) said that if I let him draw on

my body he would buy me a drink.  We met
in minutes over souvenirs and
yet he asked, trust?

When I come back the print
is always falling or already on the ground.

- Kat Dixon

(featured in the poetry forum 10.26.09)

Crash Very Hard

Thursday sings like a deadline
like a deafening tea whistle
with the subtle ache of circling swelling its ankles

Wednesday is in the wind
a reminder to Thursday of its buried self
pushing in inches toward an impossible Friday
chiming with expectant trust

Tuesday speaks from humility’s tongue
saying even cauliflower has a story
even cauliflower has a name

Monday is lofty in its nonexistence
leftover with Saturday’s unfulfilled promise
and Sunday’s sun-beaten acceptance
too dead to speak to living leaves
too alive to hear the dead ones

Thursday crashes like a realization
like the dizziness that comes when the spinning stops
singing all I want is to be a contagious disease

- Kat Dixon

(featured in the poetry forum 02.19.09)

Amory

colors fade to one chord gray
a tapping timeline toward gravity
recognizing the midnight silhouettes
that break the fall into forever

cherry blossom symptoms
in an eyes-closed, downward spiral
embarrassed by a winter residue
shaken from old boots

a bruised cloud set, dirtied by daylight
so lovely from below
emptied on a stretch of dimpled shine
the distance of identity

twinkling skin, a pollen ache
collected like tulips
wrapped in a blanket disposition
warm in winded language

a laughing hammock tangle
with noses touching
pulled closer still
by each stray flicker of common sun

sleepy, swelling lungs of sky
sharing slow, breath-filled pauses
tied to a dissimilar plane
in that moment, patient for connection

- Kat Dixon

(added 02.19.09)

Agitate and Angle

Bricked in by cigarettes
safety-pinned between concrete and a passing car
At least, I say, at least they’re holding me up

Opioid systems made me
an opiate relation
made me, made me
black-winged hegemony
Can you? Can you keep it quiet?
I never go away

In the back spaces -
where I never bother to dust -
a double helix, triple maybe, of alphabets
the hand-over-heart kind
that come from milk and taste like daffodils

No, color is devastating in shades of black
Blinds divide eye light, gravity-diving from top
to toes, where words are too good for speaking
and spills are absorbed
Teeth are straight because they should be

The ceiling fan spins offbeat
I’ve been here too long

- Kat Dixon

(featured in the poetry forum 11.12.08)

Central Time

swinging pocket watch mornings
remembered fondly to strangers
a summer in slumber
a desperate, clinging, empty dream
over waking up alone

“a lock of twos go drifting
in a jealous fit of springtime
stretched and sultry, swanlike
soothing arch of rosy trumpets
bleating boastful into sun”

a dangling, drooling daylight
clapping notes of disappointment
strips of paperweight people
stood palm to palm to spread the stain
so all were caught red-handed

ordered congratulations
celebrating, celebrating
fastidious eyesight
within a broken breathing space
mountain tightness, lungs collapse

immaculate description
a generation heart attack
algebraically solved
to waste a life on a wasted life
negative for negative

- Kat Dixon

(added 10.14.08)

Simple Simon

There is a point you cannot follow me past
Please, please
Let me slip into the bottom of the page alone

You can exhale your life in a single word
let it pass into the atmosphere and linger
keep hoping someone else will come along and notice
and maybe feel the same
But that’s not for me
I’m someone else

I am the girl
who writes I am more than letters
on the lips of envelops
and mails them to strangers
who says I am more than breaths
to nodding dandelions
and blows their seeds to windy places

I’ve known a million faces
with a million dreams and motives
IIII can save you
IIII can love you
IIII can hold your hand
I kept them for a season
wrote their names in a notebook to remember
and grew in different directions

I saw people plucked and pocketed
who would sacrifice their futures
rather than be alone
I chose me, and I’m what’s left

I asked simplicity, who are you?
I counted your petals
but still did not know

I chose daisies
framed or free
to give myself tangible hope
They were honest, with sweet smiles
and selfless self-definition

I was a page of names
connected by yarn to corresponding identities
more lovely than patchwork
a culmination of the people I had been

When you asked me who I am
you counted my petals and pretended to know
and I became a number and a shape
a series of lines, pigment
The ink ran in the bathtub
until I was less than a comma and rhymed with nothing
a victim victorious in perfecting the art of loss
The water ran black with so much forgotten thought
and I couldn’t see the bottom

I cried not to be pocketed
lost every name in tangled yarn
The daisies were the best liars
all along and no one knew

I was swept into a series of senseless recall
A thumb on my forehead
Believe in something bigger
My feet on a table and my voice screaming
I am big I am big
Reason with a doctorate speaking
no apologies necessary
to a woman with a glass of wine
to commemorate the moment
when she swung from the ceiling fan
I lost myself in these pieces, in a phrase
All canaries, all canaries
I promise promise promise

You said this is the way it is sweetie
suck it up and keep going
called me nothing, just a beautiful language
pretty words for pretty girls
sad, but the world goes right on spinning

I’m sorry that I never learned your face
but I knew your mind for a second
and thought maybe that was enough

So go ahead, drink every page
You’ll never taste it
Please forget me
Please forget
It didn’t mean a thing

- Kat Dixon

(added 10.14.08)

Two Twenty-Two

I cannot stand this artificial light

I breathe quietly
A snapshot of a woman
Immaculately dressed
To impress an empty house
A pattern too busy
I cannot look for long

A reflective worry
Asleep behind the mirror
Coats the curve of my waterfall cheekbones
In a sudden active consciousness and
A blurred clarity that tells me
I have not been watching closely

It is a lesson I have already learned
Apple juice for apple juice
Vodka for vodka
While a pleasant faced daylight
Pinched me with angry thumbs
To remind me that it’s easier to hide in the dark

There is a nervous spin in my fingers and
A hammer in my belt loop
While wall to wall I wander
With a feather duster and an empty hour

These breathless earlobe gems
Say to tiptoe in my truth to another nowhere
They’re not even my birthstone
I was always a winter baby
Still I smile when others notice that
I’ve grown into a beautiful thought
But all I want is to write poetry so ugly
They’ll have to look away

I drink through the afternoon
Waving white
Night is patient at the end of each glass
It doesn’t fool me any more than I fool myself
I stretch to fill the foot of the shower –
The only place where I could never sing –
Water reddens and peels against my chest
But eventually runs cold

My breathing is too rehearsed,
Twos and twos and twos and twos,
To be anything but ordinary
The sun appears, on schedule, like every other sun
Lindy step, rock step, two and two
I am alive all over again

- Kat Dixon

(added 10.14.08)

Adjusting Is Easy With Bubblegum

Rulers tell me eighteen means I’m chalked
up in sap, which is why I wish I
understood the metric system.

(I tell the I it’s underneath, but the I feels
outside. I never listen to words.)
Oh to live in the places that will eventually
fall into the sea! There is the pleasure of having
something to say that keeps my cheeks pink.

My sister talks about herself because she
is everything. I prefer letter necklaces that don’t
spell anything. Copycat copycat frontways and over,
spit at you, goose feathers –
What verbs can you conjugate?

Ankles without feet and legs are nothing.
Bees fix bees and lions eat lions and people
build things out of wood.
At least the connection part is good.

Good.
Good.

The only good thing about this Bible tent is
the parks – people need open space to hide
from God. I steal their picnic trees and drink their
faith juice ‘cause it takes just like lemonade.
Missile desert looks like every other desert.
Oh, they only target wild horses. Yes, that
makes me feel very safe.

My brother lives, with contacts and on
hallucinogens. If I were him I’d forgo both for the
same effect and still work in marigold business, but he
could never see yellow after the fire and who
am I anyway? I am long and I sleep in pockets.

My sister chews on metal and hates the things I am.
She only learns lessons from elliptical bands.
I always walk away with someone else’s pen.

- Kat Dixon

(featured in the poetry forum 10.04.08)