The Life You Could Have: a memoir

Category: lined poems

  • I Didn’t Hear It



    when my brother stomped the, that he made,

                                                   semiconscious

    boy fresh stepped off

                                      the bus lain face down

    in the mud

                       blood puddle,

                                    but something cracked.


    Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2025.

  • Bareback



    Don’t you ever get lonely, he asked.

    I understand, I don’t like people either

    but sometimes, he said, I just need them.


    Big toes tucked into the start of the crook of the croup

    Into the dark dun stripe

    Little toes flared back, pressed into hot slick coat

    I’d brushed, curry first, then hard straw,

    then smooth soft, then shine

    Three hours, starting at daybreak

    When he and I blew mist to the air

    When he and I looked into each other

    When he turned his head from the hitching rail

    and I fell into that rich brown there

    And he told me he knew how I cared for him

    He told me he knew

    And he didn’t lie

    A horse won’t lie to you


    My toes in the crook of the croup

    In the stripe of his dun

    Knees in low ribs

    Collar bone on his withers

    Breasts on each side, holding me centered

    We’d been hours in

    through the head-shaking, snorting, dancing gait

    We’d settled and found a place

    where grasses brushed mid-barrel

    My cheek set between his shoulder and neck

    He rocked a clomping rhythm

    My body bent with his

    bareback measure


    That’s what I thought of

    and I shook my head, no.

    I don’t have casual relationships, I said,

    I’d rather be alone.


    Originally published by Shark Reef.

    Photo: Pickles, three years old, still time to grow, Smiley Road, 1977.

  • Us



    You.
    Woman. 
    You made the word a curse word. 
    I could never say it.
    As a girl.
    Woman.
    It sounded dirty out of my mouth.
    Woman.
    Made my lips feel soft and round.
    Woman.
    Like womb.
    Like pornography.
    Spread open.
    Never could say it without feeling nauseous.
    Without my lips numbing feeling like slow motion.
    Compromise.

    You.
    Woman.
    With your side bends.
    Your loud sharp dresses stiff.
    Your desperation.
    Woman.
    Smelling like flowers.
    From some garden we never been in.
    Pink lipstick.
    Yellow curlers.
    Rouged cheeks.
    Red phony rounded.
    Coquettishness.
    Painted chalkboard scraping fingernails.
    Smiling wide dead.
    Dulling eyes to seem stupid for them.
    Using that voice that didn’t belong to you.
    Sweet faltered quiet.
    For men not my father.
    The others.
    You slut.

    slut
    i could always say that word
    once my father said it
    when you dragged me out of bed
    in my long cotton nightgown
    creamy white flowered dusting the floor
    sat me rubbing my eyes
    made me stay ’til midnight
    with your face tight knotted
    at the kitchen table to hear the drunken rant
    to prove to me that he was not my hero
    when he turned and told me
    red-eyed and wobbling
    i would grow up
    to be a slut
    just like my mother
    before i knew what that word meant

    Not like you. 
    Woman.

    Grown.
    Done.
    It is dirty.
    That word.
    I make it.
    I take it.
    Back bending.
    Vamping flattery.
    Front bending.
    Before them.
    Assaulting red lips with heat.
    Not a bought stick.
    Buff shine.
    Nails digging.
    Low toned groaning.
    Bare skinned.
    Witted.
    Loose haired.
    Clothes on the floor.
    Leave them.
    Dazzled as they lay.
    Lay them down.
    Climb on them.
    That will have me.
    Take them in.
    Me.



    Originally published in Misfit Magazine.

    Photo: 2023.

  • Rank



    she could smell a cop uncanny

    she could swing a bat without shame

    she could feel a milligram difference on her middle finger

    lids dropped chin lifted slight sway like trancing

    circled men silent awaited the verdict

                                  light or heavy

    she could knock’em out, piston fist’em

    keep her mouth shut hours or days

    pout it and drop’em, slink blend the wallpaper

    when the law busted loudmouth’s party on the cul-de-sac

      slither out unseen

    with somebody’s bottle of Jack off the kitchen table

                                           since they’d be in jail anyway

    cuss like a barge worker, laugh big, or never be made to

    no matter what, when she wanted

    verbal drop any professor

    terrify a badger with a glance black squint

    or purr sable

    only would scoot under the bed

    let them push boxes and towels around her

    shallow breathe this custody

    for the Outlaws

                                    no others

    and when the big men came

    to the back house from out of town

    and wouldn’t answer to the names they said theirs

    up the volume

    Or, whatever the fuck your real name is, Boss Man,

    offer a cold beer from the fridge                               

    firm arm curled out stretching supple

    arch twisted brown tied halter painted jeans

    and they snapped to


    Originally published by Anti-Heroin Chic.

    Photo credit: Beth Kimball, 1999.

  • Soothing Teas


    my friends and cousin implored me to stay

    at the bar when I twirled and told them, grinning,

    I was leaving with three young men I’d just met.

    next morning, when I drug back into the shack

    I told the story of the mansion where I had landed,

    such as the height of the ceilings and how many

    bathrooms it had and of the host’s bragging

    while serving liquor I had no appreciation for

    and the endlessly seeming lines of cocaine

    and exhaust of primo weed and the cobalt blue tile

    of the kitchen counters and walls and the butcher

    block isle below hanging every kind of copper

    -bottomed pan and pot and of all the time

    those boys spent on the phone futilitarian trying

    to find prostitutes with no notice at three or four

    in the morning and how disappointed they were

    and how I allowed six hands all over me for six

    crisp hundred-dollar bills and a sunny side up

    and wheat toast breakfast with whipped butter

    by sterling silver spreader

    in air-conditioned sit down

    and a forty-five-mile ride

    home in the land rover after and when I looked up

    at my cousin across coffee cups, she asked how

    I always found the richest guys no matter what,

    whatever room we would drop you in,

    from hundreds

    of men, you always pick them, every time,

    how do you do it,

    is it the shoes,

    no anyone can buy shoes, I said,

    but what then,

    and all I could see were her fractured blue eyes

    of our childhood,

    it’s their eyes. there’s a comfort there.

    it’s the comfort that attracts me.

    it’s in their eyes.

    she nodded so mildly

    no one else must have noticed

    but she and I knew

    and we were back sitting on the bank

    in scratchy grasses making sassafras tea,

    with yellow sun baking our yellow and white

    and ash and wheaten heads, fresh pulled and shook

    in a bottle we found half full with mud

    and washed out in the crystal creek

    where there were no mothers

    trading daughters to men in the dark


    Originally published by Drunk Monkeys.

    Photo credit: Plato Terentev.

  • It’s a Boy



    he slit me, sliced with scissors, the meat of me

    the doctor decided this between my feet

    without request, as was his privilege

                                     when he saw you   crown

    not wanting to think women are built for it

    to bend and curl around obstacles

    and impositions like liquid

       so you slipped through bloodied cut

    into the stark room out of me and I would never be the same          

                                        was owned by you then

                          and then your father owned me too

    and I told him

             I had never known this feeling

                                                   didn’t know

                                                         it a thing possible

    he smiled, believing

                 a new confidence in him, a father now, told me

              if I ever tried

                   to leave him

    he would take you

                         and I would never see you again

    later, that you’d be better off dead

    if I divorced him, threat meant

                         or that he had all the money

    would hire psychologists to say I was crazy

    secure custody

            so, I stayed, of course, years

                                                        as he chipped away

    but first        at six weeks

    the O B stuck his finger in me

                                                  said squeeze  

                                                                     gasped

    wow          your husband has nothing to worry about

                                     he should be quite pleased    good girl


    Originally published by Rat’s Ass Review.

    Photo: 1989.

  • Forcing Roses


    tent and keep clement

    cover

         secure

                                   and wait

    bathe in warm water

                                           give a sharp cut

    set aside

    in a vase

                       upon your return

                                                     blow

        into the closed

    bud   

        reflex and pull

                           and pour

    a tepid rivulet

    into her

                 let gravity             

                            spread petals

    untouched by your hand

                                              then quickly upend her

       let drain

        to ready

                   run your fingers

           between the folds

        into crevices

                             and gently

                 push

                        through

    tips tracing

       the ruffles                           circling open


    Originally published by The Main Street Rag.

    Photo credit: Ana Pou.

  • Do Not Say You Want That for Me


    intentional infliction of pain

    is not the secret of poetry


    just lazy

                     your disappeared

                          teachers misguided you

    they each wanted you

                   to be as wretched as themselves


    your professor, advising you to write your life

                                                                  into trifle

    and his wife, inviting you to be her tub-side voyeur

    offered the sameness of their desolation

    rationalization that this is just the way life is

    its pieces, pittances, simply scored solace points


    those just don’t know

    how could they see

    from under limestone


    gathered angels await your art

    without condition

    baby, it’s never too late.

          still                               

    you are breathing



    Originally published by Misfit Magazine.

    Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2024.

  • At the Confluence



    squash sock ankle boot bottomland

    ill green spindle and straw spears

    bur calf denim pantlegs

    American bittern takes a stealth

    toward the Western chorus


    Originally published by Hummingbird: Magazine of the Short Poem.

    Photo credit: Robert So.

  • When I Have My Own Place



    it will be so quiet
                         I will be able
    to hear three sunflowers

    in a straight glass vase

    on my dining room table
    picked up bare and painted

    blue and sanded and ash
    stained or calla

    lilies, which they pull

    like weeds, I hear
    in Australia


    Originally published by ONE ART.

    Photo credit: Ranney Campbell, 2025.