Three Poems (January 20, 2012. Issue 34.)
Stunted
Apartment's so small
even the mice must make adjustments
or they'll bump into each other
as they skitter across the kitchen floor.
Nowhere to park the car
but who needs one anyhow
when I can walk to most places
I need to be.
But two people can't undress
at the same time in the tiny bedroom.
Sadly, there is no other person.
The birds are city birds, that's for sure.
They sit on my windowsill and sing
as if the space it offers is a big deal.
And I have a stove so small,
it has to puff itself up
just to boil water.
At times, I feel like Alice in Wonderland
after she munched on one of those
"Eat Me" bits of bread.
I feel as if I could walk the city
with this third floor flat on my shoulders.
And yet, I only have to live.
I don't need to see my face
in a mirror that isn't cracked
from top to bottom.
I can easily sleep
though my feet dangle off the edge
of the bed.
I can eat takeout at the table.
I can sit on the crate I use for a chair.
The digs are humble
and I can be humble with them.
And I can rest my laptop on the lap
it was intended for,
scatter emails to the ends of the earth.
I can be a little man in an undersized place
and yet still touch others,
big and magnanimous.
I even get replies.
And none come to the cramped in me.
Maid Poem
It's not so much I'm wealthy but I'm useless.
And I've money enough, at least, to afford my shortcomings.
So twice a week, Adolfina. the cleaning lady comes.
She's in her forties, from the Dominican Republic,
speaks in an accent so thick, my ears would need to be
Moses to part it. But she can get into the corners.
She can maneuver behind the refrigerator.
She can scrub a bathroom floor so clean
no roach would be seen dead crossing it.
And it's no slave-master thing, that's for sure.
In fact, for the hour or two she's here,
that feisty gray-haired woman is in charge.
I'm the one who has to leave the room,
whose every move and action is at her behest.
while she shakes her head, repeats the
Spanish for pig-sty over and over.
When she's done, she asks me for the thousandth time,
why there is no woman in my life,
someone to mop and wipe and scour and
not hold out her palm when she was done.
I don't have the heart to tell her that there was
a woman once and that these are the very things
that she refused to do.
The day my lover left, she slammed the door
while screaming, "What you need is a maid!"
And a month later, Adolfina arrived
My heart was still broken but at least the pieces
were no longer lying around.
The Suburban Jungle
He shudders when a car backfires.
"Got me," he mutters, though not in jest.
And the time that soda bottle exploded,
he dropped to the floor,
covered his head with his hands.
Don't pop a balloon anywhere near his ears,
is all I ask.
And get him out of the house on July 4th
a drive into the country,
far, far away from the mortar blasts of fireworks
and the colored flak in the sky.
These days, he is not made for sudden noises.
Loud is okay
as long as it's a visible and persistent loud.
I've seen him sleep through jackhammers,
freight trains passing by,
even a blasting stereo could not wake him.
No, it's the cars in the trees he fears.
It's the soda bottle hidden in the brush,
bubbles pushing hard against glass walls.
And there's that balloon in the third hut from the right,
one pin prick from taking him down.
And it's that July 4th, every day for one long year,
a blast here, a rocket there,
more dread than awe,
more young man's horror than children's laughter.
Twenty years ago,
the doctors at the VA were confident
there'd be no long term effects.
Sudden effects, they didn't mention.
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In Modern Times (December 20, 2010. Issue 23.)
The osprey is an airplane.
Forget the yellow eyes,
the buffy crown,
the wide-spread wings,
pale feather edges
fluttering in the sea-wind.
It’s all steel,
jet engines, thrust.
It no longer hauls a flapping fish
up to its nest
but carries passengers to Baltimore.
DDT didn’t kill it.
It was a stewardess
pushing a drinks cart
down the aisle.
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Child, Hear This (June 20, 2010. Issue 18.)
You haven’t been in your body long.
And in your head, even less.
I can pick you up, hold you high.
Never doubt the snatch and jerk position.
Arm to your left, to your right,
head overhead
and chest anywhere
you swing your body...
I am an occupying army.
Good and evil,
they’re with me now.
Yours is innocence,
the white-skinned prologue
that needs burping now and then.
You sleep much more than I do,
a serenity to your dreams
if not a swathe of details.
They’ll come in time.
Just not in peace.
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Three Poems (August 20, 2009. Issue 8.)
Our New House
It’s a two hundred thousand dollar playhouse:
a garage for my toy cars,
a second, a third bedroom, for her dollies.
But that shingle requires replacing,
that window frame needs mending.
We’re adults and married and home-owners now.
This house is falling apart right before our eyes
so best start the fixing.
It’s a two hundred thousand dollar memory.
I’m slamming in nails, most of them straight,
all the time looking over my shoulder
as if my father’s watching.
I’m up on the roof and his voice warns me,
“Don’t fall.”
I’m sealing a crack.
The shadow of the oak behind me nods approval.
It’s a two hundred thousand dollar piece of jewelry.
Two and a half baths on your second finger, left hand.
An unfinished cellar on mine.
And what’s that around your neck?
Pipes? Radiators? Stove? Refrigerator?
I’ve got peeling paint and beam rot
bouncing on my chest.
It’s a two hundred thousand dollar blanket
that we pull up over each other at night.
It’s a two hundred thousand dollar child
that needs a mortgage payment sized allowance.
And it’s a two hundred thousand dollar cuddle.
She’s mine. He’s mine. It’s mine.
I pray it never becomes a two hundred thousand dollar burden.
Out of love, how do we sell it, who gets what?
It’s a big house and I’d hate in on my back.
Separation Days
Was it a requirement, I wonder,
my mother being indoors,
my father outside,
even as the earth cruised into twilight,
and shadows draped across the grass.
Was it all about domains, even then,
that there was no place where they could be equals,
not even in the mysterious bedroom
where I seldom ventured.
Cutting timber, he was king.
Over the stove, she ruled.
And how timorous he seemed
seated at her table.
And what a servant was she
bringing lemonade to him on a tray.
For even in each other’s realms,
they never really left their own.
She brought the kitchen to him.
He wore the outdoors in his shirt stains,
under his nails.
And their token conversation,
their perfunctory kisses,
didn’t even try to seal the breach.
And what could I do
but conform to the male line.
I was a furtive choirboy in the house,
but a hellion in the yard.
From room to room,
I spoke no louder than my breath.
But once my feet hit earth,
even my silences were screaming.
Night after night,
she called, “Dinner’s ready!”
I followed my father dutifully.
But I did not go in.
Canyons of the Mind Revisited
There was only one bus, only one road
We were all going to the same place.
The frazzled woman with the three loud kids.
The honeymoon couple holding hands.
The professorial type in the coke bottle glasses.
The old man and woman who looked at
everything but each other.
It wasn’t a case of I would see the real canyon
and they’d see another canyon entirely.
There was only one canyon.
Only one fissure in the earth, grand
and spectacular enough to take the breath away.
And we all breathed, none any different than another.
Maybe the woman with the kids
figured her charges wouldn’t appreciate the beauty
and she’d be too weary to even try.
And the honeymooners would give the scenery
a cursory glance then conserve their wonder
for that night’s sex.
And the professor. .. was he there just to survey
the rock formations, prove some long held theory correct?
The old man muttered, “The bus is cold.”
The old woman said, “I’m hot.”
Two ways of body embracing temperature perhaps,
but only one canyon.
And I’d be definitely writing a poem about the experience.
But I never did.
Instead I saved my pen for the ride there.
After all, there was only one canyon
and there was enormous breadth of people.
And there was only one poet,
though the brochure never mentioned that.
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