Sugarloaf

You convinced me
I could climb, I could summit
If I wanted to, if I was willing
to learn, to dedicate myself
to push though the distractions

 Now the distraction is
your ring on a cord
an amulet nestled between my breasts
I struggle with what was easy
when I was younger, naïve
and you were my carrot

It is lonely at the top
that was philosophic murmur
My lonely is me, alone,
talking to your ghost
railing at your ghost
You don’t answer

Sunrise fog blurs the winding trail
You shimmer, the long ago you
merging with the you I drafted
a school girl entranced by a tenured professor
merging with the you I married
merging with the you of ash
in a box in our bedroom

I stand at the base of the mountain
Gazing up and up and up
We left our names, painted on a fence
at the water stop
If it is there, the names are faded

I am here, I am faded
I hear the echo of
Amazing Grace
drifting down
to wrap around me
to walk beside me
to whisper hineni
as I trudge up the slope

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

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

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

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.

Road Trash

Sparkles of early morning light distract so I stop,

pull out of traffic onto the grassy embankment

wondering what tidbit discard  did I find,

there, on the edge of noisy busy nowhere

with no pedestrian access.

Only cars trucks buses exceeding the posted speed limits

by a radar detection margin

and the occasional bicyclist, traveling slow enough

for aberrant markers pass along  this byway to tourist heaven,

littered with fast food debris and other:

Shattered keyboard from a child’s computer

keys scattered, wires and circuits and

chips loose, curly plastic connecting the stylus.

A few feet away, a stuffed dog,

chewed, worn, weathered, loved, at some past time.

Which was the anger and which the revenge?

And who how much more I have had it up to there!

did not stop for wails of regret

to retrieve these precious

because it was lesson time?

The dog is missing an eye.

I reassemble the readalong,

tether the dog with the stylus,

and mark their passing with wildflowers,

another roadside tragedy.

Brave New World

When I was a child, I wasn't afraid of technology
There were faraways to be discovered
moons to walk on
dimensions accessed only through the wonders of light and sound waves.
Now I stare at the skittering phone, black hole life
It falls to the floor, still vibrating
I match it, quiver for quiver, terrified of the other end

In the Mulch

She finds things in the mulch

Finds things everywhere, she is gifted that way

But mostly, the most interesting things,

Are in the mulch.

‘Look, mommy, looka dis. What dis?’

Crayons. Photos. Keys. Half a sandwich.

Half a key.

Hair clips. Money. The Maltese Falcon.

Once, a passport from New Zealand.

Fodder for stories she writes every night.

‘Baby Hippo found a crayon and a passport

And made a picture in the passport and went far away

And lived happily ever after. The End.’

Yes, fodder for the stories she writes every night

Wherever we are that night, wherever we find ourselves,

And once or twice or a hundred nights,

We find ourselves in the mulch,

Safer than a shelter or doorway.

The police keep the druggies and pimps away

But they let us stay

And they listen to her stories and

bring her cookies and

chocolate milk

And happily ever after is the greatest story of all.

What the Eye Sees

work in progress

The mote in my eye conceals the flaws

The words from your mouth reveal. In awe

I sit, dazzled, glazed, until the claw

Of doubt creeps out to unseal the door

Where the hidden goblins congeal and  store

the deep, despairing pain I’ll feel if anymore

Of this mote in my eye unseals.

The motein my eye conceals the flaws

Of all you do, the lying, the deals, and more

As your tentacle fingers steal food from the poor

Lawyers connive, in suits and heels, to pour

Fire waves fed with kerosene, and ravens caw

At tent towns under darkness seal. And when I saw

If I saw, through tears, the movie reel with music score

Of Truth in memory and Justice to heal, this festering sore

As the mote in my eye unseals.

Heated Arguments

At 105 degrees, the body shuts down.

The blood has boiled away, leaving skin tight to sinew,

Oxygen starved muscles and bones.

Mine boiled away long before that,

Mine boiled away on the long trip here, seeking a wet savior

Every movement frantic, every movement slower to stop.

The pointless journey of self flagellation that put my heart

Through a meat grinder leaving a pile of scarlet mixed

With pieces that do not pass FDA approval.

I stand in judgment, fun house mirrors of me,

As jury, defendant, prosecutor and gavel pounding judge.

Order in the court.

The folded note, passed from trembling hand to trembling fingers,

Held by me, for me, waiting to be opened and read

Suicide by proxy, running into a hail of bullets,

Jetes and plies punctuate a full split on the floor and

An arabesque .

Overpriced macchiato that I won’t drink provides a shield,

I will watch and I will wait and I will fall and I will fail

To reach any conclusion except I am lost.

Cutting the Cord

Your long silence

You could be dead.

But, so could I.

Awake alternatives a stately reel

in quarter time. The fiddler

switches to a dirge and a

rotating paceline parades

through places I have lived.

It passes your door, pauses.

You do not emerge, not even

for the cymbals, not even

for the hurdy gurdy man.

Tommy Salami

Unaccompanied, she wanders into

The children’s room,

Violating rules written and unwritten

But the Librarian doesn’t stop her.

She wanders into

The children’s room

Takes a seat at the low table

Opens books at random

Disarranging the piles.

The eighth book, familiar to tears,

Scarred into her memory,

Tale of a lost child,

abandoned

taken by strangers

rejected

returned to the grocery store.

over and over,

until he is claimed by his

rightful mother and

carried home to tea.

She has no child to carry home

And brews her tea with the

Warm salt water streaming from her eyes.

It is closing time. 

The Librarian asks if she would prefer muffins or

toast for breakfast tomorrow

Unemployment

I am a feral dog fighting over rancid meat.

Scared, wild, hungry.
Sniffing, snarling. Stay away!
All slowly dying.

You think we’re human?
No, poverty took us down
to woods alleys graves.

Invisible now,
feel their cold breath on your neck,
hear their echo howls.

Naegleria Fowleri [Brain Parasite]

"Work gives life meaning, a sense of purpose, makes you feel your day was worth something."

Crashes in my head, tide roiling over the boardwalk, pulling human detritus out to mid-sea where passing cruise ships will wonder just how THAT got out there, turn the panaceas into so much white noise.

Work locks the demons in the closet, skinny fingers claw under the edge, desperate to reach the doorknob so they can come out and guide me to the TECO oven and sing me a lullaby , perchance to dream of happier days.

Secret Life of an American Wife

Secret Life of an American Wife
Surrounded by secrets-What are we hiding, anyway?
I know, I know what lurks in the hearts of all
and it is not evil, not anything that exciting or creative, no
it is fear
it is resignation
it is past hope, devoid of redemption
See! That one over there? 
He lives behind Walmart, in the truck he bought, used, when he finished high school.
Her? She skips her insulin and lunch was dumpster diving.
The greyhair across the room? She drives without insurance and will be relieved when they repossess.
Young man with frayed jeans? He moved back in with his parents and her sister and her kids.
But they all smile and pretend and make like they’re going to work and class and and and
and oh my, yes, education and integrity are so important, of course, yes sir, I will, thank you, and we all want more of this and and and
I know their secrets, how close, shoulders burning, white fingertips clutching at the precipice, they are to falling. I know.
I have secrets of my own.

A Night In Funland

"We have a winner! Here ya go, little lady, pick any prize off the top shelf. Every time a winner, folks, every time! All ya gots to do to win is play the game!"

She turned around, confused. A winner? There's a winner? Not her? Who? The barker had his hand on a girl's shoulder, not her, a girl with a Cleopatra drape of light blue beaded dredlocks.

Why her? Why not me? How come I never win? And no, I don't care if there is a next time, if I can play again later or tomorrow, I don't care what he says, I'm never the winner. I'll never walk out of here with a four foot Scooby Doo and everyone going ooh and ahh at me. Not ever.

She wasn't sure how she ended up on the curb, leaning against a light post, but the brigade of fire ants marching up her ankle was just one more line on her list of "Bad Luck Lori Stories." Tonight, she should have been snuggling up with a sawdust filled, imported from China, cartoon character and instead she'd be slathering her feet with antibiotic and antihistamine ointments, hoping to avoid a visit to the doctor and a ten day regimen of cefalexin.

Maybe a twistee-treat would turn this night into a not quite total waste, but her pocket was empty of the eight single dollars left after playing a few rounds at the water-pistol gallery. A man walked by holding a vanilla-strawberry and a chocolate-banana, leaning towers of ice cream, dripping sprinkles a Hansel and Gretel trail behind him. He handed the cones to his codfish mouthed kids. "Don't worry about finishing them, we're going to have funnel cake later."

Lori sat down again and let the ants resume their reconnaissance mission across her legs. She sat until the carnival closed, until she had to go home, until she couldn't sit any longer.

Shattered Glass

Dunk wash rinse place repeat
I transfer plates glasses utensils from one sink to the next and then to the rack to dry
moving each piece from left to right
like writing the directions for a screeplay
The warm water, the clanging of the pipes, the tiny rounds of water fighting air pressure and losing
Soothing in its simplicity, necessity
I pause, my hand deep inside a long narrow goblet
the edge almost touching the spigot
Have I forgotten?
Has it been long enough for fear-born-of-scar-tissue caution to be lost?
If this glass is too thin, if it taps the metal just right,
will it shatter?
Will the fragments shatter my hand, my precious hand, kaleidoscope it, filet it to the bone?
Will I be able to clamp, glue, stitch, anything
to staunch the spurting blood before it dirties the other dishes?
I pause and ever so carefully remove my hand from inside the glass and put all the rest into the dishwasher.

A Roving We Will Go

Jump down turn around, pick a bale of cotton.
Jump down turn around, pick a bale of hay.
Jump down turn around, pick a bale of cotton.
Jump down turn around, pick a bale of hay.

She sang as she picked the roving apart, but it wasn't soft, safe, wonderful cotton, despite her assumption, despite its appearance.

It was fiberglass.

Carcinogenic, full of slivers that weaseled under the skin, shimmied into the lungs and brain, and set up housekeeping, eager for spouse, children, third cousins twice removed to come along ans expand the compound.

Fiberglass.

That miracle substance so pervasive in the housing industry that it was regarded as the lead paint of the new millennia and no one was sure whether the better approach was to remove the contaminant or contain it in walls and spray foam polyurethane.

Fiberglass in toys and drapes and attic insulation, where she sat, fluffy piles around her. She liked the way it glistened, the hologram effect when she held a piece to her eyes and pulled, until the light coming through the tiny window was a rainbow. It was her favorite game, that fall, hiding in the attic and singing, a pretend princess waiting for prince charming to kiss her into forever-never land.

Years later, when the doctors told her she had ‘white lung', the fiberglass version of asbestosis, she wouldn't remember that fall.

Who remembers the innocent games of childhood, anyway?

Pain Killers

The train whistle smears numbing cream on my abdomen, massages it in. Each clack clack clack is a knife.
I swallow, panic clawing up my esophagus from somewhere below my ribcage.
Its coming, its coming, its coming, each clack says.
The whistle blows again and rolls on, crushing me into the railbed.

Return of the Cat

I am the cat who walks alone
You may walk in front of me, watching me over your shoulder.
Behind me, next to me, on my path, but not with me.
I am the cat who walks alone
even in the midst of all
even surrounded by loudness and cushions
I am the cat who walks alone
isolated, obsessing, apart