{"id":468,"date":"2018-10-24T03:57:33","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T03:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=468"},"modified":"2018-09-30T18:22:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-30T18:22:43","slug":"senescence-and-other-poems-by-barbara-meier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/10\/24\/senescence-and-other-poems-by-barbara-meier\/","title":{"rendered":"Senescence and Other Poems by Barbara Meier"},"content":{"rendered":"
Barbara A Meier teaches kindergarten in Gold Beach, OR, where she continually frets over how to get five-year-olds to start a sentence with an uppercase letter, end with a period, and make sense. In her spare time, she looks for agates, petrified wood, and fossils on the beautiful Southern Oregon beaches. She has been published in The Poeming Pigeon, Cacti Fur, Highland Park Poetry, and Poetry Pacific.https:\/\/basicallybarbmeier.wordpress.com\/<\/a><\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alcohol Seas and Opiate Skies<\/h3>\n

Under the alcohol seas and opiate skies,
\nHe fell asleep last night.
\ndidn\u2019t know I was checking
\nto see if he was breathing.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a curl on his forehead he hates.
\nI brush it lightly to feel if his skin is warm.
\nHe wakes with a gasp and mumbles something
\nin his sleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you alive?\u201d<\/p>\n

He grunts yes, never remembering
\nhe spoke.<\/p>\n

If I could crawl down into his brain
\nI\u2019d make him remember
\nand he\u2019d care once more for me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d whisper to him<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are lost out at sea,
\nI\u2019d tell you to swim parallel to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

But you drift out to sea in a filmy haze,
\nnever remembering the shore or the breeze
\nand the crabs dine on what\u2019s left of you and me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Little Death in Methow Valley<\/h3>\n

The moon through the clothesline wire.
\nFraming the river sheen and dusky leaves.
\nThe coarse soil beneath my thighs
\nembeds the pain just a little deeper.<\/p>\n

I hold my arms to the wire,
\ngrasping the moon between my hands.
\nWrapping the Emperor’s clothes around my breasts,
\nthe silk buttons, the lacy neckline, the wire.<\/p>\n

I am alone in the cold diamond light.
\nMy tears, pearls dripping down the sky,
\ncatching strands of snot in my hair,
\nrocking to the sobs of the Cicadas.<\/p>\n

I wear the night, velvet on my shoulders.
\nSquatting to urinate in vintage lilacs,
\nwhile you masturbate on rubber vinyl.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s left of us grows slack between backyard and basement.
\nI weave the moonlight to cover what falls to the ground,
\nmindlessly chanting,<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can I stay?
\nBut how do I go?\u201d<\/p>\n

We fooled ourselves with our fantasies of brocade
\nthat were really only polyester lies, linen fabrications,
\nand fairytales of silk.<\/p>\n

I am alone with the Emperor’s moon,
\nnaked in the diamond light.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Senescence<\/h3>\n

To lie with the forest floor,
\nPine needles stabbing from back to heart.
\nOne hand on the litterfall, digging to the O layer,
\nfilling my fingernails with the fecal dead,
\nthe other on the scabrous pine,
\nprying the puzzle pieces adding
\nto the L-organic horizon.<\/p>\n

The 4 o\u2019clock breeze rustles down the mountain,
\nscattering the canopy litter,
\nblanketing my body in duff.
\nI become one with the detritus:
\na home for worm, beetle, leafhopper, millipede,
\nwood sorrel, trillium, salamander, shaggy mane, morel.<\/p>\n

I settle.<\/p>\n

Settle into the senescence of you?
\nComposting with the creatures and litter?
\nOr go with the new growth of Dodecatheon poeticum,
\npushing up from the humus of my mind?<\/p>\n

I am rich in death and decay.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara A Meier teaches kindergarten in Gold Beach, OR, where she continually frets over how to get five-year-olds to start a sentence with an uppercase letter, end with a period, and make sense. In her spare time, she looks for agates, petrified wood, and fossils on the beautiful Southern Oregon beaches. She has been published … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-7y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":477,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}