The huge beating genius machine

The longer you don’t write, the longer you haven’t written.

Some days a sentence feels like a mountain. I haven’t been hiking much this summer, or writing. That’s okay.

I’ve been trying to be where my feet are. Trying to slow down the mind, let the body do more of the living. Let the hummingbirds fight without wanting it different. Stretch every day, maybe twice a day, work up a sweat some time between. Water the plants from the rain barrel—the water is free, we harvest it from the sky. Use my time well, and by well, I mean wisely. Which can mean anything you need.

Trying to get the small dog, who is old—though six months in, still new—to understand some things he maybe never knew before, like peeing happens outside. Ideally only there. We’re working on it. I leave a small jar of small treats by the door, try to remember to take it with me when we head out into the courtyard five to fifteen times a day to do our little dance. He understands the mornings, wakes me up around sunrise. Walks as much as he’s willing before breakfast, then breakfast. A dog helps you remember the importance of ritual. I’m trying to feel my way into a new rhythm with the instruments we've got now.

It’s been three years since we moved to New Mexico. Bought a house fourteen months ago. Two acres is more than you’d think, if you’re me, who I am, who knows nothing until I learn it. Even then, it gets dicy. I’m trying to remember what I know.

I know—I’m trying to anyway—that worrying doesn’t get the goods. Only living. Only being. Which I’m terrified to report only happens in the present.

A few weeks ago, I asked both of my therapists (though if I’m being honest, I have three) what exactly patience is. Terrified, once again, to report they all seem to agree that it’s presence.

Okay Ariane. Okay Francesca. I’ll see you in some poems.

Let’s talk about presence, how hard it is to do it. How often I fly off with my thoughts into a future that hasn’t yet happened, trying to think who I’ll be then, what I can do now to please her; considering how everything could go wrong, stacking my cards against disaster. A bitch loves doing her future self a favor. What are you going to do?

You’re going to try to talk less. Listen more. Listen to learn and learn to respond, not just react. Start where the body feels strong. We—and by we, let me be specific, I mean I— tend to bias toward the wound. Where does it hurt? What can I do? How can I stop what has already happened from happening and happening again? Do you see how it works? The stakes get higher with every thought and each thought brings the next two quick as a nail.

When presence becomes difficult, forget about patience. She’s already off to the races.

Ariane will tell me, kindly, skillfully: Stop. Right there. Slow down. Where do you feel it? What is it like to be here?

Amazing to realize some days, I might as well not have a body—all of me crowded into the heavy, whirring machine that lives on top of my neck. I try to consider where my voice is—in my belly or in my throat. I try to be kind to the hard spot on my chest that always feels bruised, to the tightness in my toes when I’ve been clenching too long, the ache in my knees when I’ve sat on the ground working for hours without taking a break to breathe. I try to pull that breath back into the root, to slow down the meaning-making machine long enough to simply observe. Having observed, respond gently. What needs care? Am I hungry, tired, restless? For what? Where am I already whole, and nourished? How can I move from there?

Some days it's easier than others. Ariane tells me: do from being. Some days, I almost know what she means.

I bought one last small bookshelf for my office a few weeks back, not long after we returned from Ireland, where we drank ten thousand pints of Guinness, drove along the southwest coast along roads so beautiful and narrow you'd swear they were holy, turned off of one to see a five-thousand year old tomb surrounded by wild flowers, held a hawk and fed three owls pieces of chicken I need you to understand were actual, factual pieces of chicken—a chicken torn into pieces to be fed to an animal perfected over millions of years to tear slower animals to pieces. We were ecstatic there. I’d never not wanted to come home before. I wanted to be only where I was, just a little bit longer, long enough to feel everything deeply enough to last forever.

Sometimes I hunger for what’s impossible. Sometimes I’d like to eat the world whole.

But the world is the world and we came home to our dogs—one big one, one small and old and working on peeing only outside—and I got a new shelf for my office. Now I’ve made a marvelous room. It is nothing like what I thought three years ago I’d want a room of my own to feel like. It’s colorful and vivid, full and soft everywhere, full of light and my lovely things and books organized first by genre, then by size. I know where to find what I want. I used to think I’d want a space most defined by spaciousness—airy and open, quiet and clean. What I’ve made is a cozy room with all my lovely things in it, where the dogs want to be, I can be at my desk anyway that I want, and guests can comfortably sleep.

I think this is all that I need. We have two acres and a mesa behind us, a dirt road that winds toward an arroyo lined with cottonwood. The rio runs thick with mud after it rains, which hasn’t been much this season.

We take what we can get and praise what comes. Step outside to feel it fall.

Across the highway there’s a village. In the village, behind the old mining museum, there live two llamas, two goats, a colony of fat white doves and a healthy handful of silkies.

Some days after breakfast, I still take out my planner and my colorful pens and get to planning ahead. Less often than I used to. More often now, I spend an hour or two looking back on the days behind me, writing down what I remember, reassembling the pieces to see a picture of my life—how I spent those hours, what I made, what I read, where I went, who I loved, if I remembered to stretch and sweat and hug my husband. I make maps of my life to feel my way into the world and into my body, notice what it’s like to be there. I am trying to slow down. Write a sentence when I can. Take the time to see a mountain.

Poems Here and There

A few months back, Charif asked me to send him a poem, the strongest draft I had. We worked hard on it together—that man asked me to work. To consider a single image long enough to let it yield new fruit. To get out of the speaker’s way, drop the mealy-mouthed asides I thought so clever, that held the reader at two arms’ length. To break the rectangle into tercets, to break the lines with teeth. I never worked a poem so hard or had a teacher so generous and patient.

It was published a few weeks back in Poem-a-Day—a miraculous 24 hours. I heard from friends and strangers, some shared with me their grief, their own time in the desert, the poems they’re trying to write. This, as much as anything else, is why I like sharing what I write. People say Hello, I’m trying too. It feels like being part of the world.

Caitlin and Stephen put out the first issue of Carry Water, a zine made in support of World Central Kitchen. Mine is the first in a very fine collection of poems that includes Matthias Svalina and Ben Niespodziamy. It’s wonderful to hold in the hands.

Another one to hold in your hands: issue two of Sabr Tooth Tiger, which so far only makes bangers. I have a poem in there called any small thing. It’s got it all—the day my father was gun-shot in the leg while at work before he went west, what my mother survived, being born a baby sister, deciding I’d like to live as long as I can the way I’d like to. All the hits.

Speaking of hits, I recorded an album of poems, all published in 2025, with synth and birdsong backing by Jared, cover art by Nermin. It's coming out next week, on my birthday. Free for subscribers, $5 or more for everyone else, with 100% of proceeds supporting Chicago United Solidarity Project. More on that soon. Very soon.

Also I have three poems in issue two of Ghost Harmonics. (There’s an online release reading September 16, you can come to it if you want.) One of those three poems, probably my favorite, is called the odds, which is a private, not very funny joke—Kyle says ...the odds... and I say I don’t understand. A whole life made of little dances...

What will we eat for dinner
Why did you go silent on me
Chavo we pee outside
It’s time to pay taxes
How do you want the rest of the night to go
I am working on my patience

I put the odds in a big pile of poems I then put in Emily’s hands, which is about as far as I’ve ever made it toward collecting a full-length manuscript. I’ve struggled to stay focused on the task, preferred to return to drafting, revising, submitting and sharing the small wins that come back. I think this time I’ll stick with it. Like Charif, Emily makes me work. Asks me to feel into what I am up to. To be present with the world of it and consider what needs attention. How to move toward wholeness, with the instruments we’ve got.

I am working on my rhythm.

Anyway, here's a poem I've read at least twelve times this summer.

How to Triumph Like a Girl

Ada Limón

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.