Thumb Tacks (A Poem About Memories)

My medicine today is thumb tacks —
I threw out every other crutch
(Except my breath and my garden)
So now I am using the smiles of

People who love me and the gaze
Of my Mississippi Bodhisattva
And black topless Jesus and the
Rublev Trinity and the spiral passage

And the face of the mother whose crown is
Three and seven and twelve
And Eazy and Dre and Ice Cube and Che
And Lou Reed in between Dorothy Day

And Pablo Neruda and George Clinton,
Then Joyce Carol Oates who understood
Suburgatory and Hannah Arendt who
Taught me that evil is not seeing.

The man who made me a pilot dressed
As a reindeer beneath the mother who
Showed me grace holding my son and
Laughing Jesus with me and my angel engaged

And mischief with my cousin in Manhattan
And swapping books with the lesbian priest
And all the girls of the Roundtable Group on
My bed and my refugee family with my in-laws.

The Trinity is at the center but Pachamama
Is on the wall also and Kali and Dionysus
Only because I need some goddesses and
Reminders of my wild, intoxicated heart.

But nothing was more intoxicating than the
Posol I drank in the milpa in Dolores Hidalgo
And next to that is the algae I licked in
The Muir woods as well as photos of angels

Dancing on water and elsewhere me
Dunking my head in every mountain stream
I can and the crew I took to Walden Pond
And the girl poets with me at Sugar Hollow

And every woman I’ve seen naked
Except three but also eight year old Morgan
Rolling his eyes with his cousins with his
Giant chipmunk grandpa backstage right

And the plane he used to teach me to fly
Next to my Wonderwoman wife and karaoke
At Chenda’s house and the prom and the pimp
And the purveyor of viscous songs of love.

I have my medicine family, my sister’s gorgeous
Smile at a Salvadoran restaurant, my aunt
Dancing while I play piano right next to
The woman she told not to marry me.

My Wild Goose sisters, my gay best friend,
The kids who were willing to dance with me
And the kids who held candles for immigrant
Rights and sledge hammers in Mexico.

My pink wearing friend who left too soon but watches
Me to make sure I don’t give up hope;
The long-bearded Morgan in a blue life jacket
Who looks enlightened and knows that it’s only

Because God is keeping him afloat,
And next to this is the angel he sent me
On the beach in Kauai with the doors
To a thousand heavens in her eyes

And a gold cross over her tanktop;
And then the two great preachers who gave
Me most of my book; the woods and waterfalls
That gave me my soul; the dining room at

Windy Gap where I asked Jesus back
Into my heart right above me dry-humping
My friend Mark when we both were drunk
And wearing a red mustache for Captain Morgan.

It’s so imperfect and disproportionate;
It’s obvious that the vision evolved over
Several days from one thumb tack per
Photo to the fan is warping the photos so every

Corner needs to be tacked to I’m running
Out of tacks so I need to overlap the photos
And make them share. At the center
Is the campfire surrounded by flowers

Because God is the campfire who contains
All of us within him and God is also the
Flower who gave birth to all of these stories.
Even though I will take these photos down

In a few months and move across the country,
They will keep me alive until then and make
My heart soar as I sit around the campfire
With all the ways God has loved me.