Ghost Knife – Two tankas

I had forgotten
the sharp knife of loneliness
that carves grey into
flesh, bone, leaving gaping holes
Nothing fills them. Nothing. Nothing.

 When will I remove
my wedding band? When you stop
ignoring my words.
Searching for why, for answers
to questions I never asked.

Green Tea with Honey

‘There is a ghost in the machine!’

I sip my tea, green tea, avoiding his eyes
After three years on and off
on and off
on
and
off

I avoid his eyes
avoid looking at all the parts of him
that made me want to drown
made me want to crawl to the surface
from the dark Scottish loch
into his bed
because my bed
no matter who else is there
is too big without him.

 All I said was, ‘Oh?’

 ‘No matter where we are
every single day
I can’t, I can’t
many miles away
so close to me
unfilled chasms
deep blue sea
your song, our song comes on the radio.
Every Fucking Time.’

 All I said was, ‘Oh?’

 and shrugged
turning to look out the window
avoiding the helix of his ear
neck
collarbone
flat squared fingertips.

 The song ends, another begins

 ‘See! Different album, but still his.
You ride with him once, just once
he offers you a seat
and now – he’s everywhere.’

 ‘The train was full and
I was holding a large painting.
He's a gentleman, in New York.'

 My ex
my sometimes ex
my sometimes now
refills my cup, adds honey, stirs.
It is brimstone and treacle
being near him, hot and sweet and gall
curing nothing and everything.

 I know we’ll end up back at his apartment
We’ll be together
wrapped around each other
because I can’t stand losing you
I know I should never see your face again
but every time I close my eyes I see your face.

I fill the chasm with tears and regrets
and dance alone
for I am too fragile
he is the shape of my heart.

 I kiss him.

 The song changes.

 I am already crying inside
on infinite repeat
crying inside
crying inside
crying inside.

I am crying.

 

 

Prospect Park 1985

It was summer
and then

it was winter

and then

summer again

Standing on the bridge

gazing down at the water

fast faster to some distant river.

It never freezes over.

The tales tossed into the rapids

carried away

churning foam obscures

anything too heavy to be 

swept away

but some secrets stay

caught in the rocks

I know what's down there

I saw it

Before

He loves me

he loves not

he loves me

he loves me not

rose petals fall from my fingers

float downstream

as sweet smelling as a funeral trellis

Christmas in New York

    We got up early, grabbed hot drinks, poured them into a thermos, a bag of snacks, piled into the car.  Lots of on street parking, because, you know, Christmas suspension of alternate side rules, a brisk walk, because even if it was warm, warm in NY in December will be glove weather, south to Rockefeller Plaza.

    The Tree, that giant spruce, covered with balls bigger than me, is deserted, the ice rink still closed, the shops silent.  It is easy to circumnavigate The Tree, admire the windows at Bergdorf and Bonwit and Tiffany and the origami tree at JAL.

    People lounge on the steps of St Patrick's, waiting for 10 o'clock mass, or perhaps they've been here all night, perhaps many nights.  The streets start to fill. Southbound cars slow to admire The Tree, the windows.

    It is time to move.

    We walk back to the car, stopping at an open coffee shop, for tea, scones, a croissant. We drive north, headed to the only museum open on Christmas day, the Jewish Museum.  Tonight, we'll go to the movies, eat Chinese food, fine tuning our traditions.

Penzoil II

At a high enough speed
One corn muffin, please
I stare at his mouth

 A car can drive upside-down
The waitress sets the muffin down
If we were at his place

Can a motorcycle? A bicycle?
Could you toast this, please? And more butter?
We’d be kissing, his hands fumbling

 At a high enough speed? Hmm …
I spread the butter
At my shirt, my hands in his hair

 A motorcycle, yes. A bicycle?
The butter melts, filling all the
Slamming the door, stumbling

I don’t think human power can do that
Crevasses with sweet richness
To his room, his bed

Humans can’t break that barrier
The muffin crumbles
I clutch his vial, hidden in my pocket

The moon sets
My coffee is cold
Mist snakes through the columbaria
It is Tuesday.

A Light Snow was Falling

The streets are damp
chill creeps past the seal
where the sole of my sneaker
meets the fabric covering my instep
making my feet want to abandon
once pristine socks, now
unpleasant squishiness
My sweater, because who needs
more than a sweater
in the wilds of Florida
is heavy on my shoulders
I’ll drape it over a chair
in my office, where the AC
will be running no matter the temperature
28 or 88
It runs
 
Waiting for the light to change
I tilt my head
mist on my eyelashes
too faint to be rain
is a kiss goodbye
 
Once we wore high boots
waded through slush
not caring how long it would take
to get to the west side
for pain au chocolat and
café au lait
in wide, deep cups, two hand cups,
where we’d sit outside
on plastic chairs.
You said, there is a spot of chocolat,
licked the corner of my mouth.
 
I don’t know if the wet on my face
is snow
or a shimmer of tears

Date Night

We tried something different
Set on saving, changing, tweaking
this thing between us
that wasn’t a relationship
that wasn’t a friendship
that defied any name we chose
if that name wasn’t Passion
 
Together, we had that aplenty
layers of now, silk layers
upon layers on top of more layers of
silk, with a tensile strength greater than steel
yet it dissolves with friction
The geometric progression, the Fibonacci spiral
lightening scorching our flesh
blood thundering
counting the seconds
syncopating our heartbeats
even when we were miles apart
 
But we, you, I wanted to try something different
something normal, human, ordinary
We rode the 6 train downtown
to some rancid art theater
Sid and Nancy
A nice normal couple in a rom-com
until they end, overdosed
in the notorious Chelsea Hotel
 
That could be us, you say
Your hand on my thigh
spreading your fingers
singeing me through the denim
I am lost in last weekend
my eyelids flicker
But we’re not punk rock gods
Or heroin addicts, I reply.
You breathe, The before.
The day before, that could be us.
 
I am melting into the worn seat
more stains and sticking to the floor
blending with decades of spilled soda
 
I close my eyes, your mouth on my neck,
The music, the smell of butter
When I open them
we are ordering vegetarian chili
You tell me you’re meeting up with friends
in Alphabet City and kiss my knuckles
and you’ll call me tomorrow
I take the train uptown
to find my car
drive home
alone

Sundays with Margaret

Three o’clock on Sundays
before the two-hour drive home
or longer, if there is traffic
I’d turn up
on your doorstep
balancing a plate of cake
or box of doughnuts
and a bottle of semi-decent rum
(if I’d gotten paid)
or rotgut (if the week was lean)
with one hand and
my daughter’s hand clasped in the other.


Hugs, and yes, child, you can play with Candy
Don’t worry if she takes a dog biscuit or two
They’re safe for humans, too.
For me, an ancient cup
filled with tea some sugar
Perhaps a splash of whatever high proof dregs
was left from the week before.
Cigarettes, lit from the embers of the last one
butts filling the plate your teacup nestles in.


We’d sit at the Formica table
and reminisce about people I’d never met
times I hadn’t lived in
places I’d never been
slowly sipping and refilling our cups
until the dog and the child
and the menfolk
decided it was time to plate
the roast or the lasagna or the beans and rice
depending on if it had been
a good week
and how early we were in our cups.


You gave me an apron
a velvet beret
a set of teacups
for my birthday
Christmas
Mother’s Day
when we knew the sun was setting
on our Sundays.

My daughter tucks her child’s curls
into that velvet beret
I tie the apron around my waist
and pour tea, mine laced with spirits
into the fragile cups
for our Sunday tea party

Reading Tea Leaves

Aisles of tea, pushing an empty cart

staring at shelves, paralyzed

the wrong tea, the wrong tea

small bags and large bags and loose leaves

and distillates and

single servings

and and and

if I take the wrong tea

 

I drive, gas gauge blinks

empty alert

but I drive

backseat trunk passenger seat filled

every tea

strainers filters water boilers

Strip mall parking lot, empty except for

homeless shopping carts and

third shifters of the dark

temporary haven

I can’t go home

There are crackers waiting to be dunked

crushed salt for the wrong tea

 

Safer to sleep in the

shadow of the lower bagmen

who haven’t scored notches

who don’t have teardrop tattoos

 

than to face those hands

pantomime communion

wafer in wine

bread in hemlock

crackers in tea

27

Three cubed

That is how many times

today

I reminded myself

that invisible disabilities

deserve my patience

and love

and all I want

is to be free

of this burden

and all I fear

is that day is

coming

soon

Four Truths and a Lie

My daughter steps past him

not seeing him

But I do

I see the huddled form

not much more than the

ratty moving blanket

He’s wrapped in

against the odd Florida chill

 

My daughter steps past him

not smelling him

but I do

When he rises and staggers

standing between the dumpsters

to pee the reek of

urine and alcohol and unwashed

carries on the breeze

 

My daughter steps past him

not hearing him

But I do

The hacking glob of sputum

padding of his bare feet

hand thudding on the

wall holding him upright

echo through the parking lot

 

My daughter steps past him

asks me

Have you seen him?

The homeless guy, with the ragged blanket?

Really skinny, has dreads?

I give him a dollar most mornings,

but today he wasn’t here

Yesterday either …

 

My daughter opens the car door

strokes her baby’s hair

Have you seen him?

Café Lucca, Very Late, on a Tuesday

He pulls the handle, then a slow steam hiss

The priests, close by, converse in Tuscano

Biscotti, cannoli, mouthfuls of bliss

He pulls the handle, then a slow steam hiss

You pull me in closer, seeking a kiss

While I stir sweet, thick, precious espresso

He pulls the handle, then a slow steam hiss

The priests, close by, converse in Tuscano

FSPA 2022 Triolet Contest - 2nd place

[Un]Happy Birthday, Sweetheart - Excerpt

It was 4:25 am. He put on jeans and a sweatshirt, went downstairs. Might as well get coffee, he could stretch that for an hour or two, until it was a reasonable time to get dressed for real.

He opened the door. She was sitting on the stoop, on the next to the top step, leaning against the rail.

“I’m sorry, I am so sorry, I couldn’t sleep. I was so lonely, I am so lonely, so sad. I … I … I came here. I’m sorry. I was going to leave as soon as it got light. Before you got up. You weren’t supposed to see me. I wanted to be someplace I didn’t feel hated.”

He sat down, put an arm around her shoulders so she could rest against him. She was skinny, skinnier than he’d ever seen her. Every time her life wrecked, she lost weight. She probably weighed less than his dog. 

“Are you hungry?”

                She shook her head.  “I don’t remember hungry. I’ll leave.”

                “I’m sorry for leaving you. Stay. At least until daybreak.”

                “I understand. I do. I want to leave me, too. Here.” She opened her purse, pulled out a magazine.  “Here. It is safer for me if I don’t have that.”

                He held the magazine. One chamber was empty. Which meant, maybe, that she still had a bullet in the gun.  He didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know.

                They sat on the stoop and watched the stars cede their light to the sun.

Sweater

I started this many, many years ago. Poem, prose, poem, prose. Not satisfied. Unfinished. After 8?10? years of 'not there yet' I realized the narrator had more to say, a conclusion. So I paused, listened to the words behind the words, to what happened after the Great Ending. And then I knew.  While we can't go back, we can't keep turning ourselves into pillars of salt. we can keep a few pieces, light a candle, sing a reprise. 

Opening another box of clothes, winter clothes this time-

How many years since I needed winter clothes,

since I lived in a land of slush and ice-broken trees?

Here, despite the perpetual August of Florida,

I wear long sleeves to protect myself from

excessive air-conditioning

or perhaps to hide the knife calligraphy

paisley tribal keloids

trailing around my wrists

handwriting on concrete walls

not yet driven into.

I place more shirts on

another shelf and take

another pile out of a

maw-gape box.

 

Where did that come from?

How in god’s good name did that end up here?

I’ve moved so many times since then, since that life,

at least a dozen times in the past year alone,

from car

to shelter

to bedsit

to short stay

to extended stay

to here,

finally,

a place that I can call my own

and now this? 

 

That old fisherman sweater he wore.Once.

Fifteen? Twenty? years ago.

It still smells of him.

 

That sweater. My fingers tremble, reach out

to the sweater that escaped Goodwill

and garbage and abandonment

to the sweater that somehow hung onto

 a fragment of a shadow of me

to the sweater still in the box and

I stroke it with fingertips. 

 

Kiss them,

as if they had just touched the Torah, the holy book, 

pick up the sweater, hold it to my cheek, eyes closed.

Kneeling by that box, swaying slightly,

time slows to stop.

 

It still smells of him,

testosterone musk and the chemical reek

of stage two alcoholism.

Rising bile squeezes my trachea,

his hands around my throat,

fingerprint dust in my nose,

so hard to breathe, let alone think.                 

Rubbing my face on it, inhaling him,

the texture of him on my skin,

remembering it as a Proustian call,

as a seismic vibration,

as a marker in my DNA. 

 

His Jack Daniels-coated tongue against mine,

now moving over me, lapping at the whiskey,

spilt by clinking glasses,

the whiskey pooled in my navel,

white powder fueled laughter

emerging between numbed kisses. 

 

I can feel him.

 

Oh god, I remember.

I am doomed to remember.

 

I stand, slip my arms into

that sweater he wore,

that sweater he wore

once

and only once,

and made his own. 

Hands trace the cables, in out, in out, in out.

Pull it down over face, neck, torso, smooths

the soft cotton over breasts that he touched,

held, loved, so long ago,

pulls the sweater all the way down to my hips. 

Lean against the wall,

as his phantom grinds against me.

                       

I slide down the wall to the floor. 

Wrap my arms,

warm sweatered arms

around my knees and bury my face in them.

I drown my lungs in nicotine ghosts,

a beached creature seeking oxygen

in an alien place. 

 

“Mama, mama, we’re hungry. We want lunch.”

My children call from the next room.

“Just a sec, sweeties.”

I pull that sweater off,

drop it on the floor. 

“Mac and cheese or sandwiches?” 

Happy Birthday Sweetheart Part 3

My husband is fucking me

      while I think about my dead ex-lover

how you swore you’d never leave me

        never say no to me

        never forget me

But you did

        you left me

        you forgot me

        you said no to me

in the acid cold of a summer breeze 

And I never got to tell you

         how sad the cup you used

        for drinking evening coffee

        laced with Kahlua

how sad it looks

         porcelain stained

        a chip on the base

how sad

        sitting on the top shelf of the cupboard

        behind the wine glasses.

 

The Quest for the Holy Grail

Hot

Juicy

Toothsome

Sliding down my throat

Gooey stringiness

Accented with texture

Spongy exterior with a

Solid interior

Just a tad salty

Now that’s what I call

A perfect mushroom-swiss burger

Checkers

99 cents

Last Call

I hear you calling,

you and my friends

from the old neighborhood.

They want to play stickball

and shootzies

and war, pretending

the dirt mounds in the junkyard

are foxholes.

But we didn’t know from foxholes,

not then, not yet,

not for a few more years, anyway.

You’re all calling me to come,

come out and play,

tell us about Big City Adventures

and small city escapades.

I hear one soft voice

inside all the other voices

sometimes reading with me

and I correct your pronunciation

of the harder words.

I hear one voice, your voice,

calling me,

come, come out,

it’s time to come out and play,

your voice,

my baby brother,

my best friend.

I heard your first cry

and your last whimper

and your call.

Borrowed Pajamas

You borrowed a too big tee-shirt

when you spent the night

so big it grazed your knees.

It shrank in the wash.

Now, it barely brushes your hip bones.

It shrank

over the long years

of borrowing and

not borrowing.

The neckline which hung off your shoulders

settles nicely on your collarbone.

Your face fades from the mirror

while I brush my teeth.

I fold the shirt

place it on the closet shelf

shut the door.



3rd Place, Gwendolyn Brooks Award 2020

Library Nooks

Memories of here with my mother

Did we sit and read, look at pictures?

Each book another color, different binding,

faded, new, embossed.

Love for words sacred source

a place with books always

a haven

a heaven.

When pain and hunger clawed

she lost herself in words

crawled into the pages

under the flyleaf.

Will I tell her story?

Will I tell my own?

Each book another color

Walls of books surround us

I transcribe the echoes of her whispers

write our stories

and am

Happy

Prospect Park 1973

It was a long ride on a warm spring afternoon

when no one was home anyway to miss me

The meadow grass called, Reading Time!

I was fourteen and alone, gloriously alone.

I lay there on my belly

deep into Jane Eyre

for the fifth time.

A young man stopped running

sat down next to me his hands on

mythighswaistass talking

asking questions as I tried to read.

Confused, resentful, scared,

he threw a leg over mine.

I was fourteen and alone.

Two men on their bicycles paused

called to me, “Hey, miss, is that guy

bothering you?” I was silent, motionless.

“Punk, get your hands off her. Now, punk.”

They stood there, waiting as he

rolled away, walked away, muttering

about strangers bothering people.

The men came closer as I put my book

in my knapsack, picked up my bicycle.

“Miss, it’s not safe here, not for a young girl.

You’re what? Fourteen? And you’re alone.

“We have daughters. Please be careful.”

They rode with me to the avenue.

I went home, still alone.