Sunset on a Wheelbarrow

Dust road shimmer, another dry afternoon

cloudburst just enough for runnels

and rotting spilt grain

a week’s worth of grain

on the ground, near the coop

but not enough for new corn growing

or unshriveled beans.

 

She sends the children

barrow tippers of grain now

mixed with rotgut bottles in the

knobbyshade tree roots

to a neighbor, watches

the chickens peck peck peck

at precious scattered gold.

 

Yellow marks and cigarette ‘O’s

on her arms, neck and thighs

wait for new color.

 

There is no money to

paint the house

but

soon

she will be vivid as sunset.

 

For William Carlos Williams

Published in Deland Museum of Art 2023 Collection

I'll Feed Your Cats

Sure, Good Buddy, I’ll feed your cats

The nice grey one, wo rubs his head against my leg

And the nasty black one, who hisses and scratches at

Everyone

But I think that is because he had a

Difficult childhood.

 

I’ll feed your cats for a few days

While you’re in Heart of Florida

Since your neighbor waroound the corner

Decided it is too difficult

To unlock the door twice a week and

Refill the water bowls and automatic feeder.

 

I’ll stop at the store and pick up

Cat food and litter and treats

Come by twice a week even though it is

At least 90 minutes roundtrip

And I’m not retired like your friend across the way

Who was friends with your parents

And regales me with stories of card games with your mom -which he lost –

But at least he gets the mail.

 

I’ll feed your cats for a few weeks

When I’m not sitting with you at

Consulate Davenport or Palmer or Bartow

At least they lifted some of the COVID restrictions

So I can visit and not have to talk to you through a window

And I can bring you gum and pudding and new shirts

And socks and it is ok to give them to you without going through

The sterilization chamber.

 

I’ll feed your cats for a few months

While you’re home with that healthcare worker

Who is supposed to assist you with common living tasks

But when I spend the weekend, after you pick out a movie

I throw in the laundry and run by Publix to get groceries

Before we discuss God and religion and is there reincarnation and

Who is saved and I didn’t know you were a minister.

 

I’ll feed the cats for a few years

While negotiating with the HOA

Over the unmowed grass and the fallen leaves

And the lawyers and the insurance agencies

And bring your Bible

The pocket Bible, not the large one, the pocket Bible

Well-thumbed and dogeared

To the rehab center in Sebring or Bartow or

Even Celebration.

 

I’ll feed the cats for a few more years

Because I don’t want you to worry

When your heart clogs from

Untreated diabetes and ulcerated wounds

I’ll pack your books and guitars

The painting you inherited from your uncle who died of alcoholism

Bring them all to my place when the roof caves in

because I can do that for you, Good Buddy.

 

I’ll feed your cats for forever

Spending thousands of hours and thousands of dollars

And don’t fucking tell me I’m

Doing God’s work and getting Karma Points

Because I am tired and already stretched too thin and

Too depressed and too over-worked and support too many people

And I am done ith being the practical dependable reliable one

But I love you, Good Buddy,

I don’t want to lose you

Even a little bit of you

So I’ll pick up another bag of kitty litter

And another bag of dry food

And a few cans of wet as a treat for your babies

Because I’ll feed your cats.

 

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?

Enigma Machine

Doorways, hallways, coffins of possibility

if you press the buttons in the correct sequence

if you solve the enigma riddle

stop the cypher shadow mushrooms

lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate.

 

A small black bird

Turing, chained by love unspoken

never spoken.

He breaks his vow of silence

vow of fear, vow of thwarted need.

The lid will slide over his shrouded form

over the coins pressed into his eye sockets

gently smother his breath

as the raven mutters a prayer

scatters a beakful of dirt.

EmmaLee

Eyes closed, does not matter. Anywhere, everywhere

Change, deny, anger, grief. Cannot escape, still

I see the shadow of your tomb there.

 

Remember tears of a time when every hair

you lost trailed hope by the pitchful

Eyes closed, does not matter. Anywhere, everywhere.

 

And apricots and placebos and clinicals were

the daily dosage locking up the door.  Still

I see the shadow of your tomb there.

 

Moonface,  bloated Sobibor.

your purpled flesh, bones now fragile

Eyes closed, does not matter. Anywhere, everywhere.

 

Counting months, counting up to safety year

drop and shatter the magic eight ball

Eyes closed, does not matter. Anywhere, everywhere

I see the shadow of your tomb there.

 

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.

Chris Dance

The first thing I saw when I woke was Chris’ face

Eyes still shut hovering on the inside

That bright orange; a Warhol Chris

Pressed into my eyelid

Haloed with blues and fours

Chris’ face, before the accident

Before the crush of metal

Before the diesel fire melted

The asphalt and flesh into one

Chris’ face, and a slowly turning wheel

 

There is a ghost bike there

A tree swallowed part

Gardenias drape the rest

At the turning of the year

I clean the leaves and spin

The wheel

Still see Chris’ face against the inside of my eye

 

I am old now and clippings are brittle

The ghost tree is tall grown through

The wheels don’t spin

I sit on the roots

Chris dancing behind my eyes

 

Chris dancing …

The last thing I saw before I slept

Was Chris’ hand

Reaching for me to dance

Winner, 1st Place FSPA 2021 June Owens Memorial Award

Published in Cadence 2021

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.

 

Moving Day

They empty my closet

sorting shirts and pants and dresses

into piles

for Goodwill or

The Women’s Shelter or

Some Memory Bear.

The papers and books get tossed

into a soon-to-be pyre.

Furniture, cookware, tumbled, trashed

The fridge. They remove a plate of cookies

cookies I made, cookies I saved

for you.

Cookies from a holiday party you never attended.

Another plate, another party of one.

The freezer is full of cookies

Saved from all the parties you

never attended. You were too busy.

Into the trash.

They divvy up ‘the good stuff.’

You take nothing,

click the lockbox as you leave.

Published in Poetic Visions Poetry Competition & Exhibition 2020 Anthology - Museum of Art - Deland

Sunrise, Sunset

My son stands, hip deep, in the Atlantic

thin flowered dress plastered to his thighs

walking along the surf, pushing his curls

behind his ears, the long, thin fingers

topped by  bitten nails.

Delicate eyebrows shade his blue eyes,

the same shade of blue as mine.

I am mesmerized by his beauty.

Blessed with ignorance

that he has already started

weekly injections

into those pale thighs.

In a few months,

the blood will stop flowing

from his shriveling uterus.

My son turns, smiles,

blows me a kiss.

A wave drenches him

and he laughs.

For his 18^th birthday,

he changed his name.

I say kaddish for my daughter-dreams

and rock my new born son

in my arms.

2nd Place, Gwendolyn Brooks Award 2019

Published in Revelry 2019

Three Seasons of Glass

                                                                   

Scratching at the glass

the casing the sills

I suck the tiny

lead paint infected

wood flakes

from under my nails

feeding the pica that will kill me

sometime in the future.

Snow builds up on the grilles

ice patterns on the panes

hold my hand to melt another pattern.

It is cold here, almost as cold as out there

no one looks my way

no one looks at me

no one sees

no one remembers

me, licking the glass, waiting.

Rain makes new designs

wearing off the dirt

press against the glass

banging head until welts form.

Blood trails bookmatch the rivulets

Harder. More blood.

I see the sky,

deeper blue behind the rain,

as I wait and wait, for sun.

The ice Floes

I’ve left my mates, dying, on tundra tracks

Opening the small tins of potted meat

Discover just sawdust inside to eat

I sledged, exhausted, past the icy cracks

Whether cold, scurvy, or evil attacks

Dragging myself, my tent, my stove for heat

Despair. I stagger on, with frozen feet

I dream my mates are dead, piled in stacks

Arctic summer flowers, it lasts a night

I press on, snow blind, wind howls, black toes

I press on, voices sing, strip off my clothes

Arctic winter sullen, it ends a life

Perhaps, they’ll find my smiling corpse one day

Perhaps, they’ll leave a marker where I lay.

Winner 1st Place 2019 FSPA Petrarchan Sonnet

Wool Jacket

You never said a word.

“What did you do in the war, Daddy?”

“I was in Italy.

Four years in Italy.

I came back, mostly in one piece.”

I button the heavy wool

suitable for mountains and trenches

but not the Florida sunshine.

Go outside to smoke a cigarette

blowing smoke rings

like you taught me.

The match glow highlights my bones

so I look like you.

Silent, too thin, lost in that hell

which left you with a limp

a long skinny scar

from midspine to thigh

and a Purple Heart

you kept in your sock drawer.

“Nothing to say, baby girl.

I went. I came home.”

I mash out the cigarette in a seashell

and bury my face in the musty wool of

Daddy’s war.

Winner 1st Place 2017 FSPA Lt George Birkner Memorial Award