Roaring in the Meteor Night

On the night when meteors fell,
through the winds of August,
we watched here below
the cindered bell of heaven.

Shreds of warm July and June,
wafted fragrant through the trees,
as barefoot
in the chilling grass,
under roaring meteor blast,
we breathe in meteor fire.

Strewn with marigold,
covered with pollen,
into winter, small, we go,
leaf lived, and fallen.

~ ~ ~

Repast

To rangy
woman, half-
baked, this
book
should stew you
well. A pinch, salt of the
earth, and secret herbs to
aphrodisiac you
back against
the wall,
between the worlds.
Come hearth-side  and
feel the stitched seams let
out in the wasteland of
the known feminine.
We have
barely
begun
the feast.

~ ~ ~

A Tamer Fur

When five I, Beseecher,
longed for a teddy bear.
I took him to the woods
placed him under a tree,
the first kindness from me.

He leaned on bark
and felt himself back at last,
rescued. Where gray and leaf framed,
the highest sky, shone
faceted like his glass eye.

I embraced him hard,
loving that to which
I gave birth, a trade,
earnestly made.
He was wild but mine,
and more than kind.

I gave him woods, and consequence
he gave me thrust and wantonness.

~ ~ ~

Woman’s Quarter

Private life is public life
in the scheme of things.
We live out the argument of our being
until there is agreement.

The moon is striated by grey clouds;
the moon, like my daughter,
stirs the crèche of things,
the place your birth rings.

Inside the close, the holy quarter,
the divine tempter walks
renewing his offer, is there tithe
to pay the price of fire?

The ducks make noises
like my daughter does
in the crèche of things.
At anytime I shall have my second birth.

~ ~ ~

Crossroad

She was five and I six.
Her hair was black, mine pale,
Second daughters of large broods
spread out in the backyards
of small houses.

Past her house ran
a sand road
into the larger world.

First friend,
that word which
banged with fear and longing
in my thin chest.

Crouched head-to-head on the steps
she showed me how to tie my shoes,
her magic bird-brown fingers
quick to follow.
I slapped her hand away.

Startled, she stood, and turned to leave.
Stay and play with me, I called.
She turned away.
Don’t go, don’t go!
You know I love you.

In humming rooms, sent to nap,
the sun crossed the walls in search of me.
I searched for her,
walking away down deserted roads,
to worlds I did not want.

~ ~ ~

The Weight of Wings

August Sundays when the heat
crowded in on us,
we sought wood surrounded springs.
Daddy drove, Mama held the baby.
We rumbled past pale pastures
where cattle stood motionless under humid skies.
The fragrance of fried chicken, and chocolate cake
filtered from the baskets in the back.
Above the pavement ahead, air shimmered
in mirage of water on the road,
It is like Arabs see in the desert, Mama said.
Water, always beckoning, never reachable.

At last we come under the live oaks
to echoing springs where
voices ring in the laden air.
We tiptoe into the shallows testing the shocking cold.
The scrub-pine people sprawl on towels
pasty bellies in the sun.
Mama spreads a quilt for bread and butter pickles,
cake squashed into cellophane.
We feed chicken scraps to minnows,
transparent to the spine.
They flit away from our scooped hands,

Daddy tolerates no cowards.
We dodge him till water laps our thighs
bluish in the cold.
Look at me! Look at me!
Doggy-paddling, we cringe at green moss
that rises and falls like floating hair.
We are suspended
in a coolness clear as air.

Underground in watery caves,
bones of creatures drop down forever
tumbled by the gushing spring.
Moss-decked cypress trees
array for breath their rooted knees
snapping turtles slip from banks,
and all live here as a remnants
of the last million years.

Mama reads, Daddy reclines, gazing
at leaves against the sky.
We chase each other round wide trunks of trees,
feet black with sand and shoulders pink from sun.

Evening comes suddenly.
Crisp leaves crackle.
The spring lies deserted frightening
in its shadowed cold.
Shivering, ears alert, at water’s edge,
we rinse the dirt from our feet
and dry our wrinkled toes.
Then, side by side in the back seat,
slipping out of damp suits into our clothes
we relish dry warmth on cooled skin.

Night gathers.
Orange fire sets behind the pinewoods.
Along the highway the moon slips
from one window to the other.
We ride inside the droning dark.
The youngest fall asleep,
one head upon her sister’s lap.
She strokes the sleeper’s hair, singing,
Lullaby, lullaby for the angels are sleeping,
lullaby lullaby,
the moon through dark clouds is creeping.

Parents in the front seat
stare out at the dark,
old dreams folding,
roads behind unwound,
wrapped around, the rotating world,

~ ~ ~

White in Tooth and Tender Claw

Children play in the cul-de-sac
where the mourning doves call
over the fertile ground, cool and low
behind the sounds of the everyday.

They play hopscotch on the soft earth
drawing circles around home,
chanting ‘Mother May I’
near the dark hedge.

There lost balls lie
above miles of earthworm tunnels,
rain trickle runnels,
blind white roots in the suckling soil.

Bare feet tamp the ground
around the grizzled trunk
of the swing tree,
its grandfather fingers hold tight
the world,
as they swing, toes up,
back and forth,
light through leaves.

And anytime they wish
they jump,
spring-footed,
foreordained,
to the cradling breast of earth.

~ ~ ~

Sweet Peas

Mother, who could
shuck peas,
apron full by apron full
in the high noon,
wore stockings
with her garden shoes,
that hovered like roosting doves
on the porch floor.
There her chair rocked round
each day, and rocked her
inward toward evening.

Barefoot, shaking the husks
from her skirts,
arm cradling a colander of shiny seeds,
she went in to stir the pots easily.
Thus she kept my father lulled,
apronful by apronful.

Then free to propitiate
the gods of the hearth
she concocted sweets,
small and round,
for us to eat.

~ ~ ~

Sidewalks in the Hinterland

We learned to see through imprint of the blood.
raised in the heat of meaning,
in houses never touching ground,
houses over hidden earth, perched above shade,
where rubber balls rolled to rest,
and only the smallest children dare enter.
There small pets thinly buried, guard expanses of dust,
which would explode if ignited,
which is exploding, minutely, over a hundred years.

In gardens of fallen blossoms, gowns whisper again
in trailing hems of housecoats,
curled hair reminiscent of grand balls,
and faces sheltered under parasols.

Vines take a century to reach the roofs
climbing over ridgepoles under the steaming sun.
The sun, hand of the drummer, beats rhythm
into lives grown into the masonry,
subsisting at azalea borders,
where shade grows things in February
hardly called spring blooms.

We lived under thunder, tremulous in the heat.
The boundaries of our world staked out with colored chalk,
doll carriages, rusted wagons, chewed Popsicle sticks,
and gray rain-wet socks for dolls.

This territory of countless afternoons,
when time like an ant with a burden,
crawled across concrete cracks deeper
than seven times seven his length, to reach
the trunk of the China berry tree, grown wanton
between the sidewalk and the street.
This tree we climbed, dangling legs,
feeling removed from what named us,
the expression around mother’s eyes,
and that bell voice that summoned.

We were called into a tall entry
where the smell of lunch should tame
dark corners of rooms nodding and sighing
along the hall.
Each one with ancient rugs,
crowded to the ceiling with curtains full of dust,
tinny accumulations, grain by grain, dangerous with must.

Barefoot with dingy knees,
We ran to the kitchen, window lit,
And on the cool linoleum, felt received.
Welcomed by sandwiches and lemonade,
piles of unfolded laundry,
leaning mint in pots at the windows,
and red geraniums grazing the glass for sun.
We ate white bread, watched as squirrels
ran horizontal oak limbs,
and fell sleepy in the clockwork of primal days.

In pale afternoons we rose, groggy-eyed,
as the backyard beckoned toward the swing tree.
Riding the board seat, twisted rope in palm,
we sailed high over the grass
where a black snake lived under vines.
We kept an eye out,
chary of reptile bellies condemned to sand,

Violets grew where the viper lived,
and when full of valor to the brim
we would pick them.
Fists full of purple trophies
brought to vases, we centered them in place;
to signify. For love and belonging,
for tall-towered beneficence,
where serpents lived untamed.

~ ~ ~

Slapping at Mosquitoes After the Vampire Bite

She had a cameo pin with a face
like her Grandmother from the side
a diamond in the forehead
punched in with a tiny awl;
it fell out somewhere along the line.

In seven billion years her Grandmother,
surely back by then,might find it,
glinting in the red star sun, a ruby, small,portentous.

Enough is enough,the whirlwind winds down,
the dog has its day, the virgin bends to the task.
The might of the river flows past
leaving mud and detritus which floats
for minutes, sinks for centuries.

Underground are hints of immortality
the pollen from daisy crowns germinates
after a thousand years of dead girls.

What will the tornado do
after a millennium of no houses
spinning about in vain
flinging stone?

Never the same without the eye of dread,
its recognition, name it answers to,
otherwise it’s kicking dust
across an unbounded plain.

The other half of the universe,
the human brain,
the reflector and the reflected,
profile and cameo,
the daisy and the chain.

~ ~ ~

Listeners

Listeners, being priceless, should not labor,
but be ensconced in the temple anteroom,
counselors with grapes on silver,
watered down wine,
on cushions embroidered
by gossiping village girls.

Dozing in gold-afternoon fluency,
until the rope pulls taut, the tinkling bell rings,
and they lift one eyelid to the petitioner,
who comes blurred by dreams.

This way they fill a need, and
if they are proficient,
converting indolence to insight,
they send us forth, palms cupped,
with that single pearl, hot, Prometheus fire,
sizzling, scarring sweetly, our hands.

~ ~ ~

Why the Widow Bedded the Handyman

It was because he gave
her the time of day,
since time is relative for who
gives what to whom.

Some things will out in spring
like asparagus
in loamy soil, up through leaves
pushing aside the dark mulch
with blunt desire.

Some things bend in the wind
that sheds blossoms.
Soaked pink petals
rained off the trees,
lie on the green grass,
dissolving into a sigh.

A breeze ruffles through leaves
of the roadside hedge,
wild honeysuckle,
fragrance for free.

~ ~ ~

Ideal Man

I married, you see,
the perfect man.
Wouldn’t have believed they existed
but this one, he was good!
Sometimes when the moon was dark
And I was most skeptical, I took him
Apart to see how he ticked, thinking
To find a flaw.
But he passed every probe slick as a newt.
There were times when I began to think
He was not a man at all, but
a dream put flesh on.
My dream, sent out of the inscrutable largess
of the universe to be my prince.
Had I really asked for that? Such an old pious notion?
Well, I can’t remember, but let me tell you,
Be mighty careful for what you ask
On a black moon night!
There are ways to do this, do it right,
Or pay the price
and live within webs
of tedium and sacrifice.

~ ~ ~

Inside Out

The windows of the small house,
fogged over, look out to moss draped trees,
grey on grey. The moss seeps.

Dawn whitens the underside of the clouds.
The world is a steaming vessel,
where rain trickles through.
The cottage is perched on leafy ground
that gives at every step.

In this closed space
the inner eye may frame
repletion,
in the teapot, cup, sugar spoon.

There is contentment
in the quilt across the chair,
a pillow for the mind grown bare,
with its own solar star.

Living inside an inside out day,
she smiles.

~ ~ ~

Chick, Apostate

Her chin sags and breastbone
is weathered as the red hen
behind the barn, where the roof peaks
with a cast iron cock
spinning in the wind.

She broods on and on,
eating in restaurants alone
perched over the steep slope
of not getting laid.

Laying days over, she stews,
souped-up
for something more
than spoon-fed decline,

Scratching aimlessly
the well-worn ground,
watching the rain
slide down the wires of the coop.

It seems the grass will always be greener
where she’s been,
ruffled, under wraps,
shrouded with discretion,

She keeps trying to rise
from the dead,
up and out -posture!—Now Strut!

~ ~ ~

Morning Brewed

He laughed in his sleep.
I woke,

scooped coffee, ladling out
beneficence.

Beneficiaries all must pass,
but not before they pass around.

It is uncanny, inappropriate,
this one hundred years of honey.

I look deep into my cup:
dark, sweet, bitter, drink it up.

He laughed in his sleep
and I

live only to go
that way by.

~ ~ ~

Ravens

A conspiracy of light absorption,
flew across the morning,

Wings shaded the meadow
momentarily cooling the ground,

Where seeds germinating
in answer to sunlit summons,

Under a pattern of passing shadow,
flocks moving across, paused.

And in that quantum instant
chromosomes altered, genes switched on.

Now these ninety days later,
white poppies bloom in an undulating swath

the width of a conspiracy
in fields of red.

~ ~ ~

Cranes Beyond Memory

Eighty-two years of gardening
and his favorite plant is Coleus,
adequate in colored leaves,
no need for flowers.

He brings a cushion to sit
on the bench and
eat vanilla ice cream in the shade.

Cardinals look for peanuts
placed in lines on the dock rail.
The red bird places a nut
in the beak of his mate.

Just so, he nods,
a kiss in some yesterday
or other.
Was he not red like the birds?

Cranes visit the lake.
They have been coming
for millions of years,
with vision too wide for such as he.

Thirty-four million years ago
there were no lakes here,
they swerved miles to avoid volcanic dust.
In collective memory of birds,
the earth moves, opens, and closes.

There will be new pills to stop aging,
he reads, then lays the paper aside.
This is how we will be remembered,
the tragic generation, missing,
by crane’s eye blink, the drug for longer life.

Grey birds stretch their wings and rise.
Far below in lambent light,
under stiff barked trees,
the lorn man nods and dreams.

~ ~ ~

Plumet

At the lake shore
I found a plumet
bobbing half stuck
in rippled wake.

Three feathers
in an old wine cork,
two white,
one smaller red.

Ibis and cardinal,
fallen plumage
claimed by
salvage right.

Pennant of the way
the wind blows,
floating pinnace
of wave and air.

A barge of jubilation
to castaways;
connection,
an answer to a prayer.

To a mind aright,
an augury,
messenger of human kind,
water-borne kite.

Someone saved
and struck
this instrument,
tossed it forth,

Who waits still
for the best
wind
to blow.

For crumbs
the tide returns,
a single shining thing,
an iridescent wing.

~ ~ ~

Birds We Watch

We are on the only sabbatical we ever got:
a migration over coastlines full of reproach.
Habits die hard,
the cauliflower in the refrigerator sulks,
soon it will go bad.

The foundation of our artist’s huts on sand,
slides slowly, waiting for flood.
When it comes the water will be full of detritus.
We have a plastic boat,
which we have filled with air.
No ark this, we
shove crawlers over the side.

Just at high darkness a feathery thing
lands flapping on the rubber ring.
We hesitate, it seems
to have something to impart,
the dinghy dips downward on that side,
there is no moon,
glimmers reflect in its heavy eyes,
in ripples along the side.
We stare prehensile, motionless
at the thing,
long bodied,
wet with feathered starlight,
kohl black along the spine.
It broods,
keeps silent,
no one breathes.
The water calmed, is glassy like obsidian.

The creature opens its beak,
screeches, then dives into the sea.
Up through ebony it surges with a fish,
to drop into the sloshing pool at our feet.
The fish moves, then stills.
What smaller fish did this one eat?
What larger bait are we?

We have moved past hunger, now.
Much is lost
that floats no more,
staying sweet in the salt sea.

~ ~ ~

Aphelion Catch

Earth swings testily toward
its escape, fleeing the vicinity
of the near star, only to slant
south, lean into tropical.
We stop working, weak from heat
cringing in the shade line of the roof.
edging sideways for cool.

We plot paths
under pendulous moss of live oaks trees.
Where squirrels lie splayed along the branches.

Inside we clink ice cubes
up against the glass
of August high noon,
one latitude north of the tropics.

Gravid skies glint above
the torrid bit of lake
warming fish past swimming,
Sluggish water holds them still.

Prying ultraviolet leaves sheaves
of wavering purple between the weeds.
Turtles hover under the dock,
holding out for sundown.
Static weather. Fish dreams.

~ ~ ~

Barred

Rabbit sleeps most the day
behind the cage of wire
where pellets surfeit hunger,
a vague remembered fire.

What is the dream of meadow
to his brain
but the density of plastic leaf
to the pressing rain?

Expatriates to wilderness
we know the captive’s pain,
the city wall. Numb to need
a god to love us as we fall.

We strain to recollect the sight
to validate our demi-urge.
Rainfall’s silver silenced lips, nature’s
gold, slips away.

The only joy you ever know,
untasted low field flower,
is in the dew condensed by night.
The fall, the only evidence of height.

~ ~ ~

Parings

She lights the fire easily
by now it’s automatic.

Today, when nothing at all happened,
she takes a bath.
The tub dragged to the hearth,
water heated on the stove.
She lays out her favorite things.

Favorite things today,
the only day
she thinks of anymore.

The soft gown she dried outside,
strewn with early maple leaves,
the clean white towel,
the bar of soap.

Apple parings fall from her fingers
to the ground.
the blackbirds prate above.
They dispense no wisdom,
but they know enough to wait for her to go.

She likes the birds
even these, black and useless.
It would not do
to see bright-colored wings in a
stone land.

She is accustomed,
captive,
to love this thin recurrent
treble space.

~ ~ ~

The House’s Keeper

She lights the lamp that
does not illumine her.
It casts a roundel of light
upon the place she was.

A hand reaches out,
wipes away the dust,
straightens the lamp,
smooths the tablecloth.

This shadow, unlit,
sweeps the floor,
washes the walls,
dusts the furniture,

cleans intricate carvings,
moving along them,
arch and cut,

the smooth labyrinthine
grain of wood,
here the mound,
there the curve and rut.

And in the tiny upper room,
without a stair,
she sips thinly
the scarcity of air.

~ ~ ~

Silk

One day I shall step into old age
as into silk pajamas
and walk out sleepless
into the warm night.

This camping place of armies,
its conquests, banquets of desire,
will be an empty field;
red-stained banner puffing in the wind.

Then will this outrageous body
bend to the flame of evening,
its red coals of memory cool,
tried and tempered,
I wake to embers.

~ ~ ~

Aphrodite and the Patriarch, Several Eons Later

‘Don’t you worry about being weighed and found wanting?’

She looked out the window a moment. ‘No. I feel that I will be sifted and found salvageable.’

‘Ah, so there are some scriptures you reject,’ he said, leaning back in his chair.

‘Reverend,’ she said pleasantly, ‘I think there are some scriptures we all reject.’

He looked at her white hair, small form, and modest dress, he was thinking of her eyes; they seemed quite young, though she was not.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘An interesting discussion: What makes sense and what is accepted through faith.’

‘I have never understood the meaning of faith. Is faith not the requirement for discernment?’

‘Yes? In what way?’ he asked, wondering why he felt compelled to listen.

She smiled, reaching out to the red roses, moving them lightly with her fingers. He noticed a fragrance, it must have been the roses, nodding conspicuously in the vase.

‘We all enjoy the fruits of human genius,’ she said.

‘Scriptures say we are to enjoy the fruits of our labor. The labor of understanding is the foremost given us. Don’t you agree that understanding is the ability to discern one thing from another?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘We are to discern truth from falsehood, but the foremost labor is that of obedience.’

‘Oh, I agree!’ she spoke brightly. ‘Obedience is necessary first,
after comes discernment, then if we are disciplined, understanding.’

She went on, ‘With this schooling we can sustain mutual agreement, see a common cause, and leave obedience behind.’

‘And this, seeing common cause, you consider the purpose of early education?’

‘Yes, but later education is something quite different!’ Her eyes sparkled and she smiled again.

He understood that he must proceed with caution; she was speaking with conviction, yet there was something playful in her manner.

‘It is not given us to know the ways of God,’ he thought, but found he could not speak it.

She passed the plate of lemon bars toward him. ‘Sweets?’

And though he felt he may have tarried too long, he leaned forward and took a confection.

‘Very tasty!’ he said.

~ ~ ~

The Paradox of Freedom

Lies in the value of constraint.
Those who need their sleep
relish most the vigil into dawn.

She who must operate skillfully
by daylight’s demands,
who by force of love
neglects her inner life,
parcels out freedom,
one candle for the flame.

In the binding light of day, skin deep,
she shapes from surfaces
a vessel for her unfathomed self.
Bears the loss of meaning,
the apparent victory of daily life.

In this, contrapuntal grows,
shadow rooted, the oak-wood soul.

~ ~ ~

Martha, Martha

She saw them from the kitchen
over her shoulder, took quick glances
as they gazed transfixed at the master.
She stirred the pot.

The high noon of the world streamed outside,
open pages connecting to the quanta of things.
Lines with vast space between.

While for her, a muffled voice
buried under a stone:
Put down the dishcloth
leave the laundry, pick up the pen.

She sets these tables before the Lord,
like her grandmother,
who prized the best china,
handmade place mats, starched
and ironed flat, napkins folded into cranes,
flowers picked and fed one aspirin,
for blossom ache at the transition
from root to vase.

Drying her hands
in late noon, restless,
she rifles through the stacked notebooks
pages in dust,
uninvited to company.

She, also plucked,feels the water floating up,
bloom defends before it fades.

One day petals will make a pathway
through the yard, outcast with ferns
to lie awaiting rain and the busy fingers
of the invisible again.

Work done, then comes at last
the thing she can count on,
the thing even she is not too late for.

~ ~ ~

Inland Fishing

Casting about
in streams of thought
this day of good fishing weather,
I come with water willow basket full
of fishes, note them, glistening, fluid,
string them, speared, gasping, on reeds, unruly.
Back in the oxgenated water, goes the basket.
Breathe! Live! How jewel-like, scintillating,
to string anyway one wished, meaningful
fish. They sparkle from this
angle, orderly, syntackled,
alive. Swerving
along the
rippling
page.
Fish tales for other
fishermen, those who angle with
trepidation, yet dive deep, catch with both hands

~ ~ ~

How to Make a Life It’s Easy to Die Out Of

This is like making a parachute
that will slow your fall, but inverted.
Inverted parachutes falling look
like anchors,
and may gravitate to the bottom of the sea.
They are useful for keeping your ship safe
in harbor,
not rubbing against other boats,
or slipping away before you are ready.

How to make a pillowcase
that can be used over and over
is similar.
You craft the foursquare case,
leave it open at one end,
arrange a button to keep the soft in,
with a way open
when stuff gets hard.
This way all can be washed, wrung,
and hung out to dry in the sun.

Now to craft a life
it is easy to fall away from.
Not like you may think,
not full of pain and darkness,
but smoothly true:
Gliding, silken, unruffled.

The parachute, remember.
It must be well made, tested,
pliable, trusted.

Then, using the handmade thing,
the pillowcase, not too damp,
or parachute, buoyant,
sure of your good work,
you will find it easy to plunge,
far, far,upward
into death.

~ ~ ~

A Terrible Taste for Beauty

She’s calling, She’s calling,
it’s too late to close the door,

Laughable to shut the windows,
to huddle on the floor,

The blast that met your summons
has blown apart your roof,

Now must you lie there naked,
undone, rendered and proofed.

You asked her to come to you,
invoked the grassy glade,

Bright lit in dim woods,
the trysting place you made.

You risked an invocation
you knew at best in part,

now, ‘they know not what’,
repeats inside your cringing heart.

You thought you were the catcher,
the weasel in the rye,

Yet you never wake to sunlight
no matter how you try.

How reckless your decision,
not to tremble when you should,

Not to recognize the sunlit space
is purposed by the Wood.

~ ~ ~

City of Consciousness

For long and long we lived
in the hubbub of collective mind.
Merchants came and went,
their wares falling from the carts.

Glittering sensations,
walls passed by un-climbed.
The young woman, four children at her skirts
bought and sold, gratified and fed,
and the city was inside.

At last, after long days and time,
she moved to green countryside,
its hills dwindle into valleys
its blue veins curve into rivers,
determined, downhill, toward salt.

Out on this expanse fly dolphins,
and up for air, diamond in the gills,
fish jump
for jubilation,
splashing down again,
into the comfort of liquid,
airless, and unconfined
in this glass clear
territory of the sea.

~ ~ ~

Easter

Let the Queen be fat,
a well-fed queen secures her kingdom.
Her porters carry baskets to the larder
heaped high. She visits the kitchen,
the pots gleam, steam climbs the walls.

She ends all quarrels with a feast
and sleeps voluminous
pillows on pillows,
wakes to a bright sweet day,
this fragile clay.

Let the Queen be fat,
let her rule succulent and fair
to round out the sparing porridge.
She envies them frugality,
who know more to life than food.
Let the Queen rule with delicacies
the fat of the land be hers.

A thirst for thin soup on Monday
fond of scrawny peasants who represent the
pull of lent when the thick
body longs for strictures, for hunger,
she finds it hard to remember
the first taste of cream.

A celebration, the fatted calf
sizzles on the spit, for Spring, for revival.
Sugar pastries sweat,
eggs bedevil themselves with capers fit
for white astringent cheese with grapes, black and filled
with seeds. She spits them into a cup,
embossed silver reflects her lips. Let the Queen be fat.
Nobles smile at life returned
Nail holes healed,
the gash under the lungs
clotted, and white robed.

She sleeps breathing shallow,
in fitful feasts, tables laid before.
Let the Queen be
starvation undermined,
full of life taken up, the overflowing cup.

Body the grazing surface of soul,
those who labor love the girth.
Let the Queen.

~ ~ ~

The Menopause Fan

A rush of heat, embarrassment of age
a faux pas of sanguine proportions
inspired this newest invention,
the gadget for girls grown all the way up
and over the hill.

Here it is, the menopause fan.
Hand-held, batteries included,
turns on at a touch.
Remember that?
The slick cylindrical handle,
fits the palm it was made for.

Press just there, a little lower, yes!
Yes! That little button, and whir,
an ecstasy, a rush,
of moving air, cool breeze,
wind in the face,
at the neck,
the glistening bosom,
all over!

As the last flush subsides,
you, drenched and wilted,
have nothing left quite so fine
as this hand-held
sweet miracle of design.

~ ~ ~

Attenuated

She cut a string
of paper dolls,
unfolded
in a row,
white paper,
faceless
as the snow.

Faceless all
and yet not
two-dimensional.

One
touches with a finger
his mate,
one pinches
his neighbor.
A third has hair
that won’t lie
down,
right at the
crown.

There is a fairy tale
here.
A peasant stole
a goose
from his neighbor,
it laid
golden eggs.

But lest we think
that all
that glitters,
is gold:
the standard
changed.

Gold
grows
greener
than grass
on the other side,
in the
forever
after.

Look,
the hand,
of the last
paper-doll
slowly,
at
countermand,
unclasps.

~ ~ ~ fini ~ ~ ~