<div class="line">Remember: you are a blank page</div>
<div class="line">no amount of shopping can cure.</div>
<div class="line">One night you go out in tassels</div>
<div class="line">and the next like a nun, but we still</div>
<div class="line">love you. Can’t hold your liquor?</div>
<div class="line">Never mind. Little angel, little bomb-thrower—</div>
<div class="line">where would our malls</div>
<div class="line">be without you? And the readings</div>
<div class="line">you give in your corset are always good</div>
<div class="line">for a crowd. I didn’t stop to give you</div>
<div class="line">any advice. Get moving, screams <em>Self</em></div>
<div class="line"><em>Magazine</em>, or get medicated. Stay in the sun.</div>
<div class="line">One more roast beef sandwich to watch you</div>
<div class="line">wear yourself out for the muse. In the mirror,</div>
<div class="line">you continue to shrink and I tell you—</div>
<div class="line">eat this piece of cherry pie. It’s laced with cinnamon,</div>
<div class="line">and maybe lithium. Also, write, but remember</div>
<div class="line">writing will not be the death of you, or the life.</div>
<div class="line">Keep watching the skies. Or skis. Sign a happy tune.</div>
<div class="line">If this world doesn’t know the magic they behold,</div>
<div class="line">create it for them. Remember to paint over the lines.</div>
<div class="line">Forget your high heels and dance, Cinderella, dance.</div>


Ghazal—

Wayfare

To a Self-Proclaimed Manic Depressive Ex-Stripper Poet, After a Reading

<div class="line">Better to be the lover than the beloved, you’ll have passion.</div>
<div class="line">Better to be the beloved, a sure thing, a lifetime of that.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">He is more beautiful but you,</div>
<div class="line">you have more power. Which is to say,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">you are just like your brother. Lift your eyes</div>
<div class="line">and people do what you say. Who knows why.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Men are like breakfast cereal. You have to pick one.</div>
<div class="line">Fish in the sea, a dime a dozen. They are singing for you, now.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Keep your own bank account. Keep working.</div>
<div class="line">Give him a blow job, and he’ll volunteer to take out the trash.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">You are mine, says the beloved, and I am yours.</div>
<div class="line">Whither you go I will go. Honey and milk are under her tongue.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Cancer and Taurus, very compatible.</div>
<div class="line">You’re the hard-charger, he’s the homemaker.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Don’t stop wearing lipstick. Don’t put on any weight.</div>
<div class="line">Don’t buy the dress too soon. If you go on the pill, your breasts will swell.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">One day you might regret. You might do better.</div>
<div class="line">You could do worse. One man’s as good as another.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Wear my old pearls. Here’s the blue, a handkerchief embroidered with tears.</div>
<div class="line">If you won’t wear heels, you’ll look short in the pictures.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">If you don’t wear a veil, people will say you’re not a virgin.</div>
<div class="line">Good luck, glad tidings, a teddie, a toaster. So long, farewell.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/GaileyAdvice.mp3"></audio></figure>

The Price of Nothing

In Our Line of Duty

Advice Given to Me Before My Wedding

<div class="line">I could say at 42 I’ve escaped death already many times.</div>
<div class="line">Maybe I was due, like a library book,</div>
<div class="line">at an earlier age, but some spirit renewed me.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I almost drowned at three, then twice got scarlet fever</div>
<div class="line">at 6 and 10. I could have died of my rare bleeding disorder</div>
<div class="line">at 12; thanks to modern prescriptions, life prevailed.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I’ve become an expert at dodging tornadoes</div>
<div class="line">and downed planes, traffic accidents and plain old bad luck.</div>
<div class="line">I’ve been in a lot of hospitals, where doctors made mistakes—</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">but still, woke up every time, little worse for wear.</div>
<div class="line">I’ve been scared of death, but now he seems so familiar,</div>
<div class="line">an old sweater I’ve casually tossed aside so often.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Please remember when I die that I was lucky</div>
<div class="line">to be here at all—my mother’s pregnancy uneasy,</div>
<div class="line">birth difficult and under an ill star, infancy involving</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">incubators for a little baby blue me. So when I finally</div>
<div class="line">take the fall, I must remember to say thank you</div>
<div class="line">for the breaks that kept me ahead of the game so long.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="audioplayer file=&quot;https://admin.rattle.com/audio/GaileyArtist.mp3"></audio></figure>

Heath

Self-Portrait as Escape Artist

<p>Chinese Horoscope: Born 1973, the Year of the Ox—<br />
Sincere, persevering, stubborn, intelligent.<br />
Born in April under Taurus, the Bull,<br />
headstrong, material, another working stiff.</p>
<p>But how can a horoscope say anything about you?<br />
laughing, he asks me. Can everyone born<br />
in the same week, in the same year have similar traits?<br />
Ridiculous, he shrugs, even to suggest it.</p>
<p>But here I am, weighted down by my intractable<br />
horns, pushing him out of his shell, little Crab, little Cancer,<br />
as we build a nest from earth and water.</p>


Poem After the Death of Dad’s Girlfriend

What I Want to Do Most of the Time

Horoscope

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">The titanium staple<br />the surgeon left in your stomach<br />is just the beginning:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">it&#8217;s the strontium-90 in your baby teeth,<br />in the bones of your parents.<br />(The dust of New Mexico, the echoes of<br />tests of implosion triggers<br />fifty, sixty years ago.)</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">Note the Americium in your smoke detector.<br />Note the rate of decay per second.<br />The trees drink Cesium click click click<br />The bees weave particles into their nests click click click</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">The traces around you<br />of other people&#8217;s experiments<br />linger in your veins, lungs, eggs<br />linger in your femur and kidney.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">Carbon-based structures,<br />we absorb from the water, from the air,<br />from our food, from our walls<br />from our parks and fishing ponds.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">We absorb and our body says:<br />it is good.</p><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/GaileyElemental.mp3"></audio></figure>

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March 29, 2014HoroscopeJeannine Hall Gailey

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March 29, 2014HoroscopeJeannine Hall Gailey

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To a Self-Proclaimed Manic Depressive Ex-Stripper Poet, After a Reading by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Advice Given to Me Before My Wedding by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Self-Portrait as Escape Artist by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Elemental by Jeannine Hall Gailey