August Poetry, Week 3

Day 14

Seducted Poem

Fear anything but love, allow

it inside where the blood

divides you from angels.

Feed your heart a cherry

give it rest from nothing

make it work for its nights

and its lovers. Seduce it

into a fearless journey for love.

Put your heart (blood pumping)

on a train, not just any train,

but the one where you last let her

lay across you in possession.

Pay off the photographers

and reporters who are traveling

in the next car, writing 

about you and her, laying bare

the blood you have mixed 

with her. Listen to the wheels

run time out. Give your blood away

one last time before the train stops.

Day 15

Nonetheless

Change just one day, erase 

secret notes passed over a desk 

in an office owned by the government.

Alter the time of your meeting

him and what you were wearing

at the time he (and you) decided

to stop the other meetings,

the ones in beds, the one near the railroad

crossing, the one with the leaves

falling all night in the rain.

Change the night (or was it day?)

when he gave you the other secret.

Day 16

Tryst, From the Beginning

He held your hand like it might shatter, cloud

the place with sharp points of light

whirling like a funnel around their heads.

It had started with a simple little flirt,

a glance over your shoulder on the lift,

you going to your apartment, he to visit

a friend in the building. A simple enough visit

that turned everything you knew to ash, cloud

of smoke not sufficient to hide it. Lift

her skirt, he thought, and take her. He is Light,

you thought, and gave yourself to him. Flirt

but don’t commit, don’t think of heads

turning when you are spotted together, heads

with mouths in Os telling everyone of the visit

to your apartment at 3 AM. No more a flirt

in an elevator, or on a street corner. If you lift

the shade, you may see his wife in the street, cloud

brewing rain and thunder under the streetlight.

Lift yourself from his visit to your bed, 

turn on the light and flirt a little 

like the beginning, like the clouds overhead.

Tryst, at the End

You walk away in a crowd

of passengers, make a right

into the station, leaving the bed

you didn’t sleep in all night, hurt

eyes from the crying, the shift

from us to nothing but a fizz

of broken whispers. It’s a fizz

of rain you walk through, a crowd

of black birds (umbrellas) shifting

and bumping you along. No right

or justice exists in this kind of hurt,

this door you will walk through, the bed

that will hold what you did. Beds

ought to be kinder, stop the fizz

of memories they want to tell, the hurt

they insist on holding. The crowd

is laughing and making small talk right

in front of you, doesn’t see you shifting.

You shift, and the crowd goes home to bed, fizzed 

in tears, wearing the necklace he gave you right

before saying, hurts too much if you know what I mean.

Day 17

Knots

There is breath in a knot you tie,

brought to the fibers by hands

that raised just last night

to the mouth, raised to the kiss 

or the cry. Knots go over 

and over themselves like scribbles

on the page you called a note.

I folded your note over and over

until it fit into a locket

I can wear between my breasts

where you are held long

and hard. It’s hard to see knots

in a chain without trying

to unravel, to make some sense

out of the mess we made of it.

All kinds of chains. Serpentine

or box. I favor serpentine, loving

the way snakes don’t tie themselves

in knots or get tangled up in lies.

Snakes simply don’t weave anything,

not for nests and not for love.

Day 18

For three nights

in a row, Bill Clinton showed 

up at our poetry group, 

considerate enough I’d say

to bring the snacks, hummus

with roasted red pepper, celery

with organic peanut butter, Kalamata olives

(the good fat), filtered mineral water. 

No one noticed who he was

until he began quoting Whitman,

extolling the meter as perfect, denying

he’d had sex at all, less

a denial than a bit of poetic license.

Day 19

Broken by Bees

If there is a god, not the One

who must always be capitalized,

but a god of lesser consequence,

she might have been a beekeeper. 

Her hive songs would be alto variations

on some trancing vibration of whales

who are directly related to bees,

were once hive keepers, considerably smaller

than their prodigy who absorbed

so much water and salt they bloated.

These tender orcas and blues, sperms

and whites stayed on once the queen

was in her chamber for love, beating

away angry interlopers, keeping the hive

a place of peace. They were eventually broken

by bees from another land, severed

from their work and cast into the waves.

We were broken too, cast off 

from the love we were drinking 

every night, from the honey we made.

This is what happens when casual gods

doubt themselves, look away.

Day 20

Air

The song I cannot sing remains 

in every sinew of muscle 

that makes my heart. It plays

over every other melody.

Ordinary music that slinks

under the door jamb

of the room we loved in,

ordinary rhythms of ordinary

lovers.  It isn’t. 

What else is there? 

Years alone tower over us. Air 

that floods the lungs of children

in pretty playgrounds, 

laughing air and crying air, air of dogs

on leashes — our air is not like that.

Our air has double chords and rests,

has vibrato, pianissimo, staccato moves. 

It holds such lonely notes

our air. It holds songs I cannot sing.

Day 21

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc*

It follows, because you used to play

dot-to-dots when you were a child

that our break-up is all me.

Therefore because of it, I must not

cry over the clichéd milk

from the pitcher you smashed

to the kitchen floor. After

a roll of paper towels sopped

up the mess I heretofore caused

for you (and the woman you are seeing)

you point that bony finger at me

and scoff at my disallowed tears.

I kept the childhood art your mother saved

for you, in a box under the bed 

you brought for some potential child

we’d have in some potential year

of marriage after your potential promotion.

I have it all and let me say,

The dot-to-dots look nothing like bunnies

or cute little pandas. They look like monsters

with fangs, ready to destroy everyone

who gets in their way. They look hungry.

*Post hoc, ergo propter hoc:Latin, after, therefore because of it

August Poetry, Week 2

Day 8

In the Box

I keep a box under my head,

invisible box of petals,

photographs, and lockets.

In ancient cultures, heads

went down at night, boxes 

for pillows anyway. 

I am not those women.

I am a woman who sleeps

with her head in the east

to see day coming, to avoid

seeing it go at the end.

I keep a box behind my left ear,

the ear that hasn’t heard anything 

but love forever. Drums and clocks

clamor for attention in that silent ear

and I give of myself to their begging. 

I am a woman who gives herself to love, 

not to picking flowers that die by even. 

In the box beneath my feet a memory 

to walk over and over in the rain.

Day 9

Dorothea

child of Oz since birth, books it

west to San Diego, passes

through Kansas on her green bicycle,

wheels clipped with playing cards.

The phyt phyt phyt of the Queen of Hearts

[from another Tough Girl Tale]

keeps a rhythm in her ears as she pedals

Toto along for the adventure.

A push and a pull of his handles, the Wiz works

his balloon over the travelers, puffs his

caterpillar pipe, rings of smoke like clouds

circle the pair as they ride toward the Pacific

where there hasn’t been peace since Elpheba

was born. Dorothea fingers the little bottle

of fairy liquor in her pinafore pocket, the foil-

wrapped cookie. Eat me. Drink me. Key’s

on the bench next to the carrousel. Oil can’s

in the waste bin by the bike rack

right by the lion cages. Go west, girl, go

where the streets are gold as sunshine

that never seems to end. Go west

where the WW no longer resides, go west.

Toto, green bow around his neck, 

hates the idea, recalls another basket,

some witching weather. Afraid of storms,

eyes on the horizon, he thinks of Lassie

who wasn’t afraid of anything. Pretty

Toto, clever as a cheshire, waits

and watches. He spies scarecrows, 

straw hands waving a warning 

over poppy fields as they wheel

into fools’ territory just shy of Barstow. 

Singing her high-pitched songs, 

Dorothea doesn’t notice the sky,

can’t smell the ozone 

where witchy-twitchy houses

are on the move overhead. 

Day 10

Sin

Shunned by yet another beau,

she gardens with a frenzy,

hands plunging in and out 

of the flowerbeds, hands red 

from watering and weeding, scratched 

by rose-y thorns, her sensibilities torn

the day he left saying she could never

be his forever, his other half. Fancy

flowers are not what comforts her today.

She prefers weeds who seem to be her sisters,

cast out and burned like she whose only sin

is her virginity. She will not offer it

to any Harry Tom or Dick, become 

the rose they pin on their lapels. 

Day 11 

Birds Wouldn’t

When women were birds

they’d never have driven a ramp 

to the ferry with foot to the floorboards

taking out the souvenirs and bottled water

in the shop on the wharf to the ferry.

They’d never have plowed

down cars of vacationers waiting

to get to the island. When women

were birds, they’d have flown 

above the family with red backpacks

of bathing suits, goggles, books

of sudoku and crosswords. No bird

would take off flying down the ramp

at such speed, taking the 9 year old child,

forever wrecking the family 

that only wanted one last getaway 

the week before school starts. 

Day 12

Castings

As if the forest were alive,

as if it could stop breathing

and still live. On the floor debris

from what we do, castings

from worms we’ve become.

Day 13

Her

The famous poet dedicates his new work 

to his wife, a woman who called 

his mistress whore. She made the call,

the accusation like a gong

going off in a Chinese temple, a throb

of words echoing into the night or day

or beyond time left on earth. He writes

of a buried heart, clear presence of fiber

that once connected him where he is not

connected now. Smarting from the last time, 

he writes of memorizing her and the sea, 

her and museums, her and her hair (such a nest!)

where he lived for so long. He writes of her 

on every page dedicated to his wife.

In another place, his mistress writes too.

Her heart has grown scales 

like a prehistoric fish which shed them,

took on legs, walked on land 

searching for lovers breaking up on trains

or in taxicabs, or in the beds that will not lose

the scent of them. Her heart, smarting 

from the last time he rolled her over, took

his time with her, then left, is a buried heart too.

She is whore and angel; he is lost like she knew 

(really always knew) he would be lost. 

No one hears the slapping 

of the sea against the cheek like she does. 

She writes of him bitterly as a whore must.

Day 14

Seducted Poem

Fear anything but love, allow

it inside where the blood

divides you from angels.

Feed your heart a cherry

give it rest from nothing

make it work for its nights

and its lovers. Seduce it

into a fearless journey for love.

Put your heart (blood pumping)

on a train, not just any train,

but the one where you last let her

lay across you in possession.

Pay off the photographers

and reporters who are traveling

in the next car, writing 

about you and her, laying bare

the blood you have mixed 

with her. Listen to the wheels

run time out. Give your blood away

one last time before the train stops.

August Poetry, Week 1

This week is a jumble of poems that zig and zag between topics. Included is a poem about my name, which is a recently revised poem. I chose to revisit this older poem rather than do a new one for this topic. I want you all to see the new iteration, the homage to my father.

Day 1

You’re No Mister Rogers

Harold B of Orchard Street is it you 

we ought to blame

for building your house 

in such a way that water won’t absorb

and floods down here to irk

my neighbor lady

when it flows so heavy, so profuse

her cellar becomes 

a righteous swimming pool?

Is it your driveway hard, not grass,

that heaves in winter, warm enough

to break the ice

that melts and follows gravity

to her cellar door? I think you know

it is; I think you must not care

the woe you cause 

for us lowlanders living here.

My neighbor hasn’t met you, nor have I,

but everyone down hill

from you has vowed

that no invites to friendly summer

barbeques will flow up hill you,

since we are pretty sure 

your water is what causes us such grief,

with no apology, without relief. 

Day 5

Dusting is Heavenly

Lift each piece of bric-a-brac,

each tiny vase or glass cat,

each shell collected, saved 

and stacked on every shelf

that’s out of reach except

by stool or Swiffer on a pole.

Move every framed memory

of that party everyone attended,

the photos of your wedding day,

and all the children grown

and gone. Don’t forget 

the Wedgwood cups and bowls.

Divide the house into time zones:

single years, divorce days, 

falling for husband #2 time,

raising kids, the big move.

Organize, be efficient.

Strike out from your bed early.

Your home reflects you, some crazy

apron-wearing girl once espoused ...

but you, you know the simple truth:

the dust will win 

if you don’t get it first, and even then

it will cover you when you are dead.

Day 3

Catching

I remember doors,

the door I opened to let you

come up the stairs

I remember your feet scuffing

over. The door to your bedroom

and the smell of you in the sheets

when I opened the door

to your bathroom after. Doors

open and close both times

when IDors leave, open and go out

then hear the latch catch

like your voice whispering

good-bye darling girl as I slipped

down the street beneath the window 

to the bedroom

where you would not sleep

the rest of the long long night.

Day 4

A Carol

My parents wanted me

to be alive, to unfold over time

from a curved fish in the corner

of my mother’s womb, to the woman

you see now in the center of things.

I started in my father’s eye, a light

flicking, a chuckle clicking in his voice,

I was the song he sang to stay alive

in cold Zwickau’s winter nights.

My mother held her breath 

and pushed me out, dark-eyed girl, 

made of earth and snowfall. 

I was given a holiday name

for the gift they shared. 

They said my name aloud 

and I became their song.

Day 5 

Rain

In your two apartments,

both under some married people

and their sleeping children, we lie

listening to rain, hope for a downpour

not a popup shower that passes on. 

We choose this. We decide it

and no one can say no. We don’t ask.

We don’t care about anything

except our bodies reaching

places that feel like paradise.

It rains and rains; we feel warmed

by it. We call it music.

In Enkenbach, wet leaves 

stick to our shoes

as we race inside to undress 

each other, forgetting the boxes

of schnitzel we bought for supper.

I saved one leaf for a long time, 

until it crumbled into dust

in a book of poems I was reading,

a book about losing. 

Your ring

from a marriage that failed

is in the other room where I don’t go

except to assure myself you love me.

I wear a pearl ring. I’ve heard pearls

bring tears. It must be true the rain said.

I’ve lost

(misplaced) the note you wrote me

the day we decided to end it. I am

the finest person you have ever met

you said then. You didn’t write loved

for fear the husband I was taking back

would make me pay for that love.

I’ve misplaced (lost) your note.

Another downstairs apartment,

another ring in the other room,

this new and waiting ring. I can feel it 

all night. We shopped for steak 

and mushrooms to broil, raspberries, 

cream to whip, chocolate sprinkles. 

You say love all night for three nights.

You write love in my hair, on my eyelids.

Then we end it again, you asking

if I’ll be alright soon; I say so 

of course for your sake. 

We never wanted to be finished

with love. We missed it,

the pearls of rain on the windows

coming down beside us

in Ithaca where we listened 

to our breath all night for three nights, 

each of us quiet, awake, 

thinking we might misplace love

if we fall asleep, or forget the rain.

There is more love than the music 

can hold, then there is nothing

except me on a plane, watching ice

crystals form on a window 

too small to hold you, too high

for there to be rain

enough to wash away anything.

(There are times now

when I have raspberries, 

I can feel you 

eating them out of my mouth

like music or a downpour or a pearl.)

Day 6

Elemental Eve 

  — after “LOVE” by Robert Indiana

Even if he were the best,

even if he were famed

for what he did with LOVE,

he got the materials wrong

the way men sometimes do:

metal that rusts, corrodes

paint that peels, flakes. 

It’s elemental, she says.

Made of flower parts, rain,

angled sunlight, the tide

coming over and over, filling

everyone, teasing their hearts.

Eve, Pieta of the Old Testament, 

found the body of Abel,

washed him with her own salt.

She knew about LOVE, spread open

the V of her lap for him as once

she did when he swam 

from her into the tide. 

Even if he knew the secrets

his brother harbored, 

he could not 

have stopped coming, 

she would not have 

stopped his coming. 

For all his mother’s tears, 

O, LOVE, not even for love.

Day 7

Girl of Baseball

Can’t run, catch, hit, throw

so baseball is out

as a career, a Saturday play thing,

a team where I can shine.

No smell of freshly carved out 

diamond, no standing

on the mound to the roar

of frenzied fans.

No Hall of Fame

or MVP for this girl,

just the ultimate fan,

the wife with all the scores

stats and facts

about the boys of baseball:

Yaz’s retired 8, Mark “the Bird” Fidrych’s 

awky stance, rookie of  the year in ’76,

Sale of the Babe for 100 grand

and over 80 years of curse in return,

Wade Boggs’ 3000 hit in ’96,

Sox win-loss to the pinstripe by memory.

Can’t run, catch, hit, or throw

but man on man, this girl’s got it made,

a favorite with all her hubby’s pals

who wish their wives would even watch the game.

July Poetry, Week 4

OK OK OK, I'm tardy in posting. But sometimes life kicks you in the head a little. That's been me, with some medical issues.  I've been writing but not posting. Here is July Week 4, with August Week 1 on the way tomorrow.

Day 22

Street Smart

At seventeen, she gave herself over to a slavery of fashion:

wore skirts that resembled cheap pillow cases, jeans

not scrubbed for weeks with holes in the seat and knees.

She painted her nails and lips black, corn-rowed 

her unwashed blonde hair, frizzed the ends.

She wanted boys to like her. It was the recipe

of every desperate girl, mixed in front of the mirror:

be as common as a weed, be a xerox of every other girl,

don’t stand out, don’t act too smart [if you can, lie 

about your SATs]. She hoped by eighteen there’d be a boy

for her, someone to ask her to Prom. In the back

of her closet, a shimmery dress of cornflower blue, 

soft satin shoes to match, and long white gloves. 

Audrey Hepburn never had to dress down for men,

Grace Kelly was born for her royal diadem.

Claire was run of the mill with a purpose —

there is no such thing as a princess these days.

Day 23

Pick Up

Tell me all things false are true. 

— Counteé Cullen

Pick up your brush, curse this canvas

with pretty paint that I’ll believe

you love me. Tell me my hands

are musical instruments, my face

your mirror of God. Say I am 
all that exists in the world. 

You, artist 
of lies, 

tell me what I want to hear.

Pick up your suitcase. 

Leave your keys.

Day 24

At the Poetry Reading

She sweeps the audience for a face,

someone she might know

who’s bought her book,

a person who might shill

the crowd with positives,

get a few to buy tonight.

Not a familiar face

among the maybe 30 

restless people, 

most sitting near the back

for a quick exit if they’re bored. 

She’s on her own to wow

them with that poem

about spring, the one 

about brightly colored birds

soaring and swooping

over a perfect Maine landscape.

What she wants to read

is the poem about how death

came in the form of a lover,

how the woman’s kids watched 

him take her from them,

praying they weren’t next.

She’d like to read a new poem,

something not in her last book,

knows this is risky, knows someone

will ask could you email that poem

so I don’t have to get the whole book?

When she says it’s new, not in the book,

the poetry lover will sigh and walk off

shaking her head, muttering

why did she READ it if it’s not available?

She thinks about putting out a tip jar,

something to bring in a few dollars

when book sales are low, but then

she’s no performer. She’s a poet,

and there are lines to be drawn here.

Day 25

Closet

Dresses and blouses

in several sizes, up sized

for the heavy years, slimmed

for the light. She fingers

her wedding dress, safe 

in its garment bag, tucked

away from fading light, recalls

her mother’s fingers 

buttoning and smoothing

in the little room off the altar

where she left as bride, returned

as wife to sign the certificate

that bound her to him. A drawn

breath, something like a sob,

and he comes into view, no longer

a ghost, but real as the fabric

between her fingers. There,

in the closet they once shared,

a whiff of his after shave, a bristle

of his chin, and she is alright again,

no longer a widow, once again 

part of we. Music plays in her head,

she holds out her arms to him 

for a dance. She takes the sleeve

of his wedding suit, wraps it 

around her waist, sways with him

at this renewal of vows. In her closet

there is always the dance, the dress,

the question: did I love you well enough?

Day 26 

Upta Camp

She wants it sold, needs to be done

with upta camp. She says it’s  gotten old,

not fun keeping the saltines in a metal box

to keep ‘em crispy enough to float on soup

in mugs she found at garage sales. No fun

sleeping in sheets damp from the fog-air

of upta camp, no fun going up the hill

to the biffy, dumping in a cup of lime

after a day’s pooping and peeing. 

Camp is his pet, each log fitted just so

into each other, brush cleared by his labor,

reedy weeds pulled to make our beach.

He made a place for us upta camp, a place

to be a legacy for generations coming next

after he was gone. But she wants it sold,

is vexed by our fussing at her when she insists.

As ever, she gets her way, is not swayed

by our tears or his down on the beach

where the pond laps at us for the last time.

People from away, from Massachusetts,

are eating off Nana’s melamine plates,

drinking from the purple, blue, green aluminum 

glasses that sweat from iced drinks, warming

themselves on chilly nights by the wood stove

Dad installed himself, face blackened

when he put the flue on backwards. All that’s left 

are a few photos and me still mad at her.

Day 27

In the Fairie World

What color is Tuesday

in Cathedral Woods

where fairies sleep 

in houses built by children

who still believe 

in magic and wishes?

Is it in spangled sunlight

or delicious notes

from birds who lived on

when dinosaurs failed?

What word is Wednesday,

spoken in the hush 

of leaves that cover

the trail to secret 

meeting places, ceremonies

for changing seasons?

What song is Saturday,

carried on the backs

of tadpoles as they wriggle

into frog princes or kings?

Along paths, under stumps,

at the edges of rainy pools,

the whole fairy world 

knows the answers, will not tell.

Day 28

On the Bench By the Flying Horses

waiting for boys, waiting for summer 

love she’s only read in beach novels.

Her hands sweat in her lap, 

mouth dry as chalk. She knows this 

is the summer when love will come, 

will walk right up to her if she waits, waits. 

The sun on her face, ripe as a peach in the sky, 

salt in the air, on her lips. In her ears, drum beats 

carousel music from the amusement park. 

Wild Animal Kingdom, 

where your wildest summers begin.

She wonders if she should have stayed home,

written a romance like all of her adventures,

a pack of lies in her diary. 

Want an ice cream, Miss? 

Suddenly it’s summer

on the bench by the flying horses.

Day 29

Flat

8 Marquess Rd, London 2PY—

cabs and lorries schushing 

by in the early morning rain,

city waking slow and sultry.

National Nit Picking Day,

advert at the door of the preschool 

across the alley, parents warned 

to check the hair of every child, 

to use the acrid soap, 

the thin-tined comb if they find a few. Catch 

the bus to ULU for class, the apple 

man’s saved a tart one just for me.

In the pub later, over a pint of McCaffreys,

marvel at how much no one here 

sounds anything like the Queen. 

Day 30

Reading Richard Blanco

At 15 I learned that boys

sometimes love boys 

the same as I did.

I found out they fight

over stupid stuff like I saw you

looking at him, saw him wink at you

like I did.  I saw Paul chase

Dale with a butcher knife

out of the restaurant, screaming, crying. 

At 19 my first apartment

on the wrong side of Burlington, VT

my three gay boy-friends next door cared

that I was safe, Carmine teaching me

to walk with confidence, his own walk

like a woman on the catwalk. Safety drills

every week, me rapping on the wall

to say come quick, Rick rushing in

with a baseball bat and a yell. Jay cooked 

meatballs, fed me when my paycheck 

at the phone company wouldn’t pay for meat. 

Reading Richard Blanco, I remember 

how tough it is to be gay, to be

Carmine or Jay or Rick, desire for something

out of reach, targets for a beating

on any city street. My turn to worry.

How have they spent the rest of their lives?

Day 31

Mad Day

There is a fire in her head,

no smoke to alert the fire department,

no warning at all that it was lit

or that it rages on destroying

her day. She’s felt it coming

for days, first a tick like a tiny clock

then a popping sound in her ears,

then full conflagration 

from temple to temple, frontal

to nape of neck. It eats every moment,

makes it harder and harder

to stay quiet. She wants to stop

the emotional traffic, quell the flames

but all she can do is open her mouth

in a silent O and watch herself burn.