I wear my mother’s terrycloth
four in the morning back in her home
renting for cheap while it waits to be sold & I wait
for a signal
wait for the coffee machine to finish
for ancient crumbs
in the knife grooves of the cutting board
to tell me a story
how to solve the equation of winter
plus no propane
plus no wood
The answer is always
So what
I like it that way…
Hello old home! Hello hard pain!
* * *
Maybe I am building sure
hammering something into shape
something that can be hammered
stone or leather
something
There is air moving through
a conch that I have never seen but often hear
louder & louder
it is carried to whatever desert I fling myself
it arrives in the early morning
& I must get up get up & do what?
Dance around a bit drink coffee fast
go to work
I am my own little shadow
& someday my body will give the gift
of availability the easiest way it can
which is to say it will stop
* * *
Here we do not recognize walls as walls
& so the weather lives with us always
Last night I dreamed again about the meth-head
neighbor who drove right through
our chain-link gate
Today you & I will burn the stumps
lining my mother’s driveway
After that we’ll take apart the redwood fence
that I used to seal & re-seal for summer cash
Today I heard a voice rushing through a conch
& got up to find the mouth Today
my mother’s robe
is wearing me around
Keeping Our Own Names
We have one photo of the courthouse wedding
us in our shorts with two of my grandparents
in attendance champagne & cold cuts came after
My grandfather the retired naval officer
was only a year from death & so
drank the most blessed us with his dancing
For the honeymoon we moved
to a cabin in Joshua Tree where
scorpions ran around the porch
like Arabian horses Tarantulas
with monkey faces moved in like carnivals
that broke down & never left
We made a movie about escaped convicts
living on the lamb
poured brandy on our collection of stab wounds
gleamed from the local bars
& ha remember how worried they got
when we decided to stay ourselves?
L.I. Henley was born and raised in the Mojave Desert village of Joshua Tree, California. Her chapbooks include Desert with a Cabin View and The Finding, both from Orange Monkey Press. Her full-length, THESE FRIENDS THESE ROOMS, will be published by Big Yes Press in June, 2016. She is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets University Award, the Duckabush Poetry Prize, and the Orange Monkey Publishing Prize. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, RHINO Magazine, Main Street Rag, Askew, and other places. She co-owns and edits the online (and soon to be print) journal Apercus Quarterly with her husband, poet Jonathan Maule. Despite having multiple auto-immune conditions, she is an amateur bodybuilder and is studying to become a personal trainer.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 