MAIREAD CASE

I Have Complete Confidence In You

Death continues, exhaustingly

the ground

Death shocks the ground
green wires in soil

He is gone

They said it wasn’t true
he isn’t gone, he can’t

be
not being is impossibility

the sun
        (the sun)

the water
in the bucket
under the sun
is permanent 

*

If he is impossible, everything is
The vanishing point is dust

This refusal is the whole point

meaning the refusal to imagine
to wager

*

My father 
My dad

Dad loved the sky 

and me

and now 
I trust continuation 

     not in a holy way
     a way like holy is sewn in 

*

Before I recognized it
as you do a hat
or the law 

It was itself 
not an other 

Now it is a color
a direction shimmering
             an arrow

It is cupping hands to drink

I miss
sitting near

I miss
is now a state

warm and numb
I wander out into it 

*

Do you think he’s staying warm
with all this cold cold weather outside

              Yeah

*

God is change

a new new rainbow

through this we move
through enjoyment and with it
towards that which otherwise

is mute and unavailable

We must be in the world
to love the world

*

When I am embarrassed to say God
it’s because God has been
fixed or frozen, dead like a picture

I am never embarrassed to say ocean or moon
never ashamed when they bloom in my chest

*

I thought if I wrote everything down
everything would always be true

a box of money

But feelings are not
they’re not even facts

What was hope
and what desire
what is now

I do know, I do

*

These four questions include pain
They include my father, alarmingly present
and the guides (listening)

Today my nephew called to show me
an earplug

My student asked for an extension
and good luck on a date

I want you to ask, multiply

Today in class I wrote
THE BIGGEST ERROR IS ASSUMING
ADAPTIVE PROBLEMS ARE TECHNOLOGICAL

I wrote it even as I know I’ve made it

the sun (the sun)

*

The pain is not the source 
though you think most about it

how it sits, snuggled in

a familiar rock 
heart-shaped

a heart 
a color
to swim inside 

   why stake home on this 
   why hide it

I have a reckless knot
and I will unwind it 

*

If someone had said

you will break your heart

a tumbling
pinwheeled
sunflower

I would have said yes

Yes, you’re right

*

They did say protection                           is valuable
                                                                      is wealth

a wealth, if not the one

which taught me to reflect with tenderness, an overwhelming symphony of it
which turned my heart into a metal sculpture

It is harder, a new practice
to look back, to be angry

not at myself or the world
but the situation
the desire to restrict, to prove

If you can’t protect
you must be worthy

like the pile of rocks at the museum
drag them on paper to make color

a pattern of suffering, a shaggy breath

*

I watched a documentary
about a sex cult

It could have been me

not the leader

the girl who disappears
the boy now well enough to talk

Now I can watch it and not cry
which is not in itself a triumph
it is not anything but a fact

*

When students search bias, meaning on the internet
and find prejudice, meaning prejudice is part of the definition

They shut down, which is reasonable

Why memorize anything with your failure sewn into it
Nothing will exist if you don’t fail, so don’t fail

Option one is to find your own quiet lane
become an early morning runner

Option two is help everyone but yourself
require a treat to experience your feelings

This is it, particularly when your brain is young

I wanted an old brain so badly I ran away from home

I didn’t have expertise
I didn’t even have it for myself

It is hard to feed and water the living and the dead
to feel the wind in your hair and lungs, to move and to sleep

The trick is recognizing it is not a static process

My student writes about mushrooms in first person plural
BUT HOW DO MUSHROOMS READ?! she asked us
CAN YOU ASK A MUSHROOM?! we asked her

My best pedagogical model in this year of our lord
is that my students are on motorcycles and I’m right behind

*

My best definition for bias today is a statistical one
a systemic distortion due to factors not allowed in the derivation

This revelation of the future is freeing

*

A body can         continue 

I can watch the cat
gently eating her food

The sky can be described forever 

I romanticize it because it is

Hair in my mouth
Red gray salt 

Two men missing 

This is always now 
and it is the sun

the last of the cake 
wrapped in foil 

Here we go to love
and with it, for ever

for always

Mairead Case is a writer, teacher, and editor based in Denver, CO.