Aquarius

January 27, 2025February 26, 2025 | Megan

The First Universe was You
(Maybe one day it will all make sense. This is probably just my hubris talking.)

You were the first person I saw
—visually—as a Universe

I had been feeling it for a while–
this idea of the infinite

In the love I watched women
Give to everything, everyone

Around them, the spiraling arms of
Stars– known, each in their own sphere

I heard it in my head, when you
Explained: I am trying to love myself

In essence, “I contain multitudes,” and I
Chalked that line up to some god from

Our shared past-religion, but it turns
Out it was Walt Whitman

Describing women, of course, he was
Describing himself and thereby all

Humans, alike in our vastness, and then
A friend’s husband died, and I felt

It all over again, this idea that we
Are these very fragile, very short-lived

Phenomena, and yet, somehow infinite,
And don’t forget that must explain

How your trip was my trip, or I took
A part of your trip as my own trip

Like a feather in my mushroom cap
Like a rose in my funerary lapel

Because I am enough was what your
Psyche told you, and I am here to

Infinite down on that memo, that factor:
I am enough. You are enough. Multitudes.

You contain multitudes which is why
Making decisions out of temporary

Information must feel so hard. So,
Take my hand. Grab my spiral arm

Arm in arm. Here we go. Forever
Into the Unknown. Universe.

Glass Greenhouse. Neighborhood. January 2025.

Arms

To have the arms of the Universe flung out before
You. I’ve seen it with my own eyes—one arm rolling
Sushi with her son, another arm filled to the infinite with stars
Held comfortably under her daughter’s climbing shoes.
You are made of Everything—darkness and light– the stuff

Jeweled into the eternity of now, this moment.
Universe, can you hear her? Like listening to nuclear fusion
With a stethoscope—the breath, the pulse, the beat, the
Mother-heart giving life to all existent things, and even things
That may no longer be. But that act, the fusion at the

Core of the Universe—every opal clouded nebula, a nursery
Every blazing Azure star, a new creation, can you imagine if she
Knew she needed to become something new, and altogether
Different entirely. What if she knew that her core was burned
Out, her fuel exhausted and all of the stars, all of the

Beings that rested in her consciousness would once again
Become so much dust, so she died. She gave up her
Old form, her life, her arms spinning off into the horizon
She simply couldn’t go on fusing life together in that way
Explosion/Implosion it wouldn’t matter which way the

Translation took place, but the Matter of it all would always,
Always remain. The actual physical atoms of all she gave, all
She shaped, all she sacrificed, forever encoded in the stuff of
Galaxies, dwarf stars, and solar systems we’ll never lay eyes on
She knew it. Yet, she wept anyway, despite her knowing

Canal. Two ducks. Drainage pipe. January 2025.

November

November 5, 2024November 12, 2024 | Megan

Every

every Color
all part of all
unity upon Unity
breath After breath
sun Rising sun
moon setting mooN
high in the Wide
Blue bowl of the Sky
star birthing star
miracle joins miracle
death Brings death
life gives Life
bathed In
every Color

Timpanogos, through the window. November 2024. Image, my own.

In Memoriam: November

While the geese continue to fly south
Crying, cawing in the early white billows
And pillars of sky, the snow comes in
Little promises, licking the ground like a prayer
The branches in the woods become
More bare by day, raw and line-worked
Wiring out against the frozen landscape
In stands and thickets tromped and tread
By silent, fervent feet, over and over again
Now the waiting for winter to truly take
Hold, for snow to come and bind up
Scattered grasses, still the scratching leaves.
A memory of Novembers, a palace of dying,
Nostalgia of hearths and firesides of
Rooting, resting and acceptance

Palace

tides, ever shifting
ever flowing, ocean
wave upon wave
turning over universes
places of refuge

Midway Mercantile. November 2024. Image, my own.

She Burns

No one seems to like it, they
claim her strength is admirable
that it’s a protection to her
and to them, she’s not sure
she burns, like a kiln stoked
into an inferno, she burns like
molten earth just exited from
a magma chamber, bright she burns,
a dragon girl who never wanted
to hurt anyone, seventeen
hundred degree flames hiss at
who she is near, causing a
tremble, a stir, she burns because
she knows that women, for
centuries, have had to grow
small, small and insignificant,
accessory and accompaniment,
to receive life, she can’t ever
let on that she wants learning,
love, expression, voice, power
no those gifts are reserved for
others. She burns like the forge
meant to melt metal, meant to
make paper towel racks and
weapons, she can choose wedding
colors and a matching fascinator
she can choose rugs, mugs, décor,
clothing. She can choose the height
of her heels and the blaze of
her eyes as long as she stays
thin, “nice,” and modest
she complies, and writes it in a poem
where will she go with this fire?

Refuge

From the moment everything broke we wished for a place of peace and refuge. Another person is never a home, only your own skin and bones can hold you. Another person is never a place except for you are your own place inside your sinews and blood streams and heartbeats. A house can be so much more than a home—a refuge, a covering, a landing, a carrying, a place, a palace. But it would be nothing without you and the warm, bright, dark burdened and unburdening beautiful people who surround you—in sorrow and joy, in tears and laughter, in silence and singing. What is a place? A person is always a place– a place for the heart, body, and mind to attend—a place of love and horror, a place of welcome and displacement, a place of empathy and disgust, a place to be thoughtfully alive, in, inside. The heart of the house is the person who beats inside, who braves the storm to return, who lies down on the floor to pray and bless the space because it is all that holds back the outside, all that protects from life.

Prayer

please, please, please
please, please

Water

October 19, 2024October 19, 2024 | Megan

Pacific Ocean, Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Creation

creation is like wielding the mystery for a moment
being given the chance to turn the nautilus over in
your hands and awe for a few precious flashes
its precise and perfect structure, wonder at being
given transubstantiational power, snippet of the
infinite, devotional on the unity of all the cosmos
unraveled, a glittering equilibirc instant

Driftwood, grass, trees, stones. Image, my own.

Shit That Makes Poets Laugh

a couplet of haiku
getting to write the word
Uranus
espousing astrology while
being an unbeliever
writing all the people
you know into poems
recording the natural
world and wishing for
more smell words—the
olfactory is important,
man, and so under
expressioned—playing with
all mediums of art– music,
history, science, language,
painting, sculpture, theater–
being a badass generalist
the fact that mostly poets
read your poems
realizing that everything
is art, and it’s easier
than you think to tell
someone to fuck off
trying to figure out
if anyone really has an
editor? (Maggie Smith,
in my dreams you’re
reading this and cutting
and slashing, and un en-
jambing to your heart’s
delight.) Hearing that
one of Mary Oliver’s
best poems, ‘Wild Geese’
was an exercise, and
experiment in end-
stopped lines performed
for another poet, a magic
trick (hear Krista Tippet’s
interview with Oliver
on her unparalleled podcast
*On Being*)
realizing that your fly is
down, thank you John
Craigie
trying to figure out the
infinite mystery while
trying to figure out
american politics while
simultaneously realizing
that life is built on water
looking up the word ‘word’
in a thesaurus
realizing that you
should have hidden an
easter egg in all of your
work and you’ve forgotten

Libra Season

As Libra season concludes, I’d like to
invite all of us to love a lot of Libras
for the next few days. Like
my triple air massage therapist,
bless her. And my best friend of
all time, he could not be more elegant and
nuanced in his approach to the world, and people
who I don’t even know, and people I once knew
all air signs, maybe it is the open-hearted
pleasers, balancing their relationships, the “we”
that Libras present, it’s that fire in me that
always gets stirred up by the scale and measure,
skin and bones, maybe it is the quality of the
breeze this time of year that makes me
fall in love with Libras, a little more each
October, regardless, I breath the unruly whips
of Wind and Rain, the scatter of leaves,
the romance of dying with Libras in mind

Hunter’s Moon. Super Moon. Full Moon. October 2024. Image, my own.

Chap Book
best is the open
chap book on the soul leave it
vulnerable in air

Lovng Hard (no i)
Sussing and figuring
and preparing and
planning as to how
to love
difficult people:
Drive the Bus,
Like Mo Willems’
Pigeon, in the
front seat
Self-assured, ready
Without license, but
there is no playbook
to love these difficult,
purposeless individuals
NPCs, people who have,
a bit, burned out on life
Who see the end, but
seem to have no ideas
on wellness or whole
ness- are not willing or
able to take the reins
any longer, who are
Offensive and rude
Blunt without purpose
Unmeasured in their
Aimless wanderings
through Time and
Space, Pretentious in
their lack of attention
to others, Tough

Summer Triangle. Oregon, October. Image, my own.

Library

September 28, 2024September 30, 2024 | Megan

Concerto

i. Vivace
The Body and Brain create a near-constant concerto,
Orchestral ensemble that one piece of the body
May be tasked with– the soloist, for a moment–
The violin of your legs stands in the spotlight
Lifting the bow back, striking the perfect legato
When you lift each leg to strike the pedal: rising, falling,
Rising, falling, in perfect détaché, the synchrony,
Breathtaking, a veritable martelé, up and down,
Crescendoing, up and down, faster and faster,
Staccatos building as you climb that little kicker,
Beast of a hill, every note separate and distinct and
Purposeful and achingly beautiful, melody in movement

ii. Largo
The reality is that the soloist,
The part of the brain or body that is on display, is
Accompanied by an orchestra of other reactions,
Symphony, an entire production of body-brain actors
Breath increasing as you crest the top of the climb
Then wide, expansive sucks of air through your lungs as you
Descend, behind the soloist your legged
String instrument, a complex array of bodily musical
Tools, exchanges of sensory information via energy, chemicals,
Afferent and efferent neural fibers, we know this
But to experience it is so much more vivid, vibrant,
Actual art an afferent neuron gathering signals from

iii. Adagio
The skin like the finely tuned drumhead of the timpani
You’re pedaling along at a rapid pace and your
Neurons are sending each breeze that crests your
Quadricep, each flexion of your fingers as you
Reposition your palm to the vibration of your handlebars
You begin to really circle, pushing, leaning into the
Pedals with more and more force, lifting your
Foot up to keep time and pace with the peloton
This is where the sensory experience really
Begins to take off, you’re in the pace line driving
Your muscles pumping with blood, efferent signals,
Through the femoral profunda, spiccato of oxygen

iv. Finale
Feeding the whole quadricepal system: vastus medialis,
Vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, and rectus femoris
Don’t forget the glutes, rich, ringing riot of
brain-body orchestration, molto crescendo
Coming in hot… finish line, and stop!

Ramón u Cajal, Neuron, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales

Polyphonic Technicolor Synesthesia

this is how it feels to be in an autumn
wood at sunset, the entire mountain
set ablaze, a conflagration of color in
that warm waning light, each leaf in
stark relief to something visually near–
brittle topaz bark, white aspen trunk, every

sense housed in neon-rich sculptural portals
a magpie cackles from a scrub oak turning
amber its wings that look so black in flight
reflect a deep maxixe beryl,
oceanic opalescent contrast Paul Klee’s
Polyphic Setting for White

poets, mostly, long for synesthesia
so that they can produce that contrast
that catch of the craw between all worlds–
senses coming undone in an autumn
wood or at the very least they’d like to produce
it on the page, certainly the experience

might be so disconcerting as to be
horrible but if you could see autumn
lanced by a sunset or a taste a technicolor
leaf as it fell in a stream of wild wind,
maybe if you’re there long enough
in the woods, the colors begin to have

a particular flavor, like the brown dry leaves
of wyethia amplexicaulis, mule-ears become
tiramisu in the mushroom undergrowth
they take on a shape in your psyche
like a rhombus with the sun setting above
the far angle, always forty-five degrees

Michigan City Public Libaray, Michigan City, Illinois. Architect Helmut Jahn, 1977.

Thin

i do not know what
it is about now, every-
thing just feels papery
a little thin around the
edges, a little dry and
flat

Billings Public Library, Billings, Montana. Will Bruder Architects, 2013.

To Write a Poem

to write a poem
is a lot of staring out
of eyes through windows

Desert Air Motel, Sanderson, Texas. Built in 1960, restored, 2022.

Send Your Kids Weird Texts

Send your kids weird texts
Tell them that you’ll
Give them lunch money
If, when you are really
Old, almost gone, they
Will let you run your
Papery, age-spotted hand
Through the thicket
Of their hair
Make them pause
Question the sanity
Of your replies
Make them promise
So that your five bucks
Is paid forward in your
Elder years, it’ll be worth it
To give them a future
Imagination of how
Much you will
Always love them

Abandon All Solutions

One of my good friends
Heard this in a dream
Or in a wakened state
Where she was contacted
By the Universe,
So the advice wasn’t really
Given directly to me,
But it has come to mean
Everything

Lawrence Public Library, Lawrence, Kansas. Gould Evans Architects, design John Wilkins, 2014.

Sense

September 6, 2024September 7, 2024 | Megan

Poppies, West Yellowstone, 2021. Image, my own.

Hunger

I won’t make it. He said. With a seriousness beyond seventeen. I’ll seize up. Freeze.
I won’t be able to crawl on the ground to the escape exit, to climb the bookshelf
To project myself through the ‘hypothetical’ broken glass where the star
Quarterback threw the desk through the shatter-proof window. I won’t move.
He said. As his brown eyes swam in a sea of fear and knowing. Lean limbed,
Hair the color of a house wren’s feathers, sandy brown. Eyes knowing and wide.
I won’t make it.

Desensitization comes from experiencing the same thing over and over and over
So it comes as no surprise when there’s another school shooting many teachers
Parents students don’t even blink, we don’t even pause to take a breath, to wonder
What it would be like if someone brought a gun to our school, what would we do
Instead we slip over to social media to hear snippets of the aftermath, we read
A New York Times article that offers a couple more of the details of the shooting
We go to work early to prepare our lessons and students move through the hallways
Seemingly unaffected. But the reality is that we, as a nation, worship guns more
Than we worship human life. Isn’t that strange and sad. We worship a mechanism
Designed for death—to kill, to end, more than we believe in the sanctity of breath of exist-
ence. What are we afraid of?

You will. I reply. You’ll make it. I’ll pick you up. He was small enough I was pretty sure I could
Do it. I’ll pass you to the closest person to the window. We’ll jump through the shatters,
Shards of glass all over the floor and grass beneath my classroom. We’ll make it. You’ll make
It. It was the first time we’d really had to sit in the corner of the classroom, our back
To wall, practicing waiting die is one of the most cognitively dissonant experiences I’ve tried
Blood beating, pulsating, trembling in my ears. Cheeks hot, heartbeats rise. I won’t make it.
He said. And I knew that he was probably right.

Deer Creek Reservoir, Sunset, September 2024. Image, my own.

Wonder

Open-eyed
Glimmer
Smile that lifts
Every part of the
Human frame
Awe that creeps
Into cheekbones
That breaths
On lips ready
For uplift
Sacred tilt of
The head
Stillness of shoulders
Confirming
Listening
Sensing
Magic

Pasture Plus Cows and Wheel Lines. September 2024. Image, my own.

Bike
Pedal, pedal, push
Push, huff, huff, up, up, over
crest the tipy-top

Double Rainbow over Soldier Hollow.September 2024. Image, Corbin Wright.

Sticky

So these poems are actually micro-narratives. You can play with these at the kitchen table. I triple-dog-dare you. The premise is simple. Write a ten, 10, word narrative about yourself. Key: do not overthink this. This is such a fun little enterprise to play with in the 1010 intro to writing class I teach.