Sitting with the Not Dying - MO

No one knows why she's still here.
Three months without food, two weeks without water,
she has become an anatomy lesson:
dark, fixed pupils in an adamantine face,
the cords tying the bonnet of her skull clearly outlined on her neck,
veins running like mole tunnels over her forehead,
feet blackening.

She breathes.
I hold her hand,
read to her from her own bible,
the underlined and highlighted bits,
in the hope that she hears and finds comfort.
She might wish I'd shut up
so she can finish her business of dying.
I don't know.  I don't know.

Sitting with the Dying - EG

Sitting with the Dying - EG

I walk in upon
a relay team of elderly siblings
proficient at sitting and loving.
So easily they leave behind their own tasks,
their sewing and the calls of their grown children,
to care.
I show them how to draw up the morphine
to the lullaby of the tv laugh track

I should draw up their patience.
Instead the bull of my own will
kicks and snorts -
wants to trample to dust this outdated cereal,
this stained white doughnut box holding up the trash can,
this bowl with its dusty chocolate,
a dozen bottles, each with an inch of perfume.

Oh, how I love to do something.

Sitting with the Dead - Margie S

Margie S. died today, called at 6:15 a.m.
Only 62, surrounded by no one.
A ward of the state since her son went to jail.
I read her prayers I don't believe
about a love I do believe.
And the staff,
about whom you would think the worst
if you saw them out on this street,
came to touch her and say good bye. 

Branding

Used to be what men did to animals.
What owners did to slaves.
Now embraced by the great society.
Our new ideal.
To be branded.

It Takes a Village

It takes a village to raise a child, I hear.  Apparently it takes a small industrial city to get me through 6 months of cancer treatment.  I am humbled and grateful for everything that so many have done for me this past year.  What follows is a list of the hall-of-famers.  If I’ve forgotten anyone, please forgive me.

And if any of you need anything or know of anyone else who needs anything - as long as I’m still on the planet I’m at your service. 

 THANK YOU TO:

Chris, who was there every step of the way and still slow dances with me in the kitchen.

Kathryn for her prayers and cozy chemo caps.

Tim O. for staying in touch and recommending movies, especially Kenny because it made me laugh out loud.

Linda S. for organizing the chemo-sitting crew that I didn’t think I needed.  And all the sitters.

Vicki S. for being the Czar of Communications for so many.

Maggie U. for being willing to stay in the hospital without being sick.

Chuck S. for shaving my head & Sue M., Linda S., & Roni B. for covering it back up.

Roni B., Peggy S., Linda S., Kathy F., Cathy B. & Kaya, Tim R., Marie (Miracle of the Squashes) P., Tina S., Rae and the water aerobics crew, Faith W., Ann M. and for more I’m sure I’ve forgotten, for feeding me so lovingly & well.

Katie McG., Denise F., & Linda S. for the clean house.

Jamie B. for the karmic red meat swap.

Tim R. for the sympathy shave.

Kathy F. & Maggie U. for trying to make me look more presentable – it IS a nice wig!

Kassi O., Linsey S., Mandy, Linda S., Stacee & Amirra D., Jamie B., Carl B., Andrew F., and Tim V. for the drive-by rakings.

Tina A., Becky D. & Chris M. for the shots

Roni B. & Tim R. for the pet sitting.

Chris T. for her experience, strength, hope, cards, gifts, nagging & constant presence.

Linda S. for the shopping expeditions and Michelle C. for making them a spiritual experience.

Sarah S. for all the crystals and prayers.

Rabbi Jim for the healing ceremony.

Christy N. and the whole “time off” crew.

Ann & Gary for the peace of their land and beasties.

Neal R. for the journal to try to keep track of it all in.

Denise F., Rachel B., Gretchen D., Maggie U., and Cynthia B. for being my go-to medical team.

Elizabeth H. for the intelligence and competence that kept me from worrying about work.

Dr. W. for not once making me feel guilty about taking care of myself.

Denise F. for the house call.

Rachel B. for opening her home and for being there every day.

Ginny M. for trying to keep me eating correctly.

Layla A. for supporting me without having met me.

Everyone who visited, sent me cards, flowers, prayers, wishes, and also for those who called with the blessing of their own issues and got me out of myself.

Roslyn B. for demonstrating the pure joy of being alive.  

With light and love,

Namaste

mao

Things I'll Miss When I Die #1

Chris.  Laughing at our shared language & jokes so old we only need one or two words to tell them anymore.

The joyous optimism of dogs.

Sitting on the back steps on the morning of a day that will be too hot but isn't yet and listening to the world waking up.

Green.

My sponsees calling with boy problems, parent problems, work problems, school problems and then finding their own brave and beautiful solutions.

Dancing in the kitchen in my underwear.

The feeling of wool moving through my hands and the clunk of the loom.

Something To Thank My Mother For

Something To Thank My Mother For

I was born first.

I was the largest, hanging low and heavy like wet wash.

Her mother was two months dead  and her husband in the service,

   so she rode in her father's truck to the hospital.

Massachusetts in January was dark as the grave.

Her fingers had swollen, she couldn't wear her wedding ring.

My eyes were brown at once, oxydized by hospital air.

So the nurses judged her abandoned, me a half breed

   and brought her coffee and smokes.

As for me -

   I was so round, so satisfied, so wombful,

   I slept and slept.

I never woke for food.

I was already left-handed and dreamy.

My whole first year she had to tickle the bottoms of my feet

  to wake me, crying:

Look at this.  Look.

Like a Student

Like a Student

I chose him, the most nearly correct answer.

I erased my current choice:  None of the Above

and it's close contender:  All of the Above

gladly.

Worry

Worry

I knew it worried him,

no matter what he said.

I knew he thought I'd go back to her.

Even in the beginning,

when things were good,

he'd ask questions.

Later on,

when things got bad,

I'd cut off my fingernails

and come home late.

This is not gender

This is not gender

we are dealing with.

All of your concerns are irrelevent.

Who cares about what skin you chose

or the mechanics of insertion

or the posture of excretion?

I have chased that mercury across the linoleum

and I know.



Labor Day

Labor Day

The boys have grown so hard this summer -

   little apostles of violence screeching out of their driveways

   in their bad cars.

The mamas are pleading up and down the block -

   don't you leave.

   don't you take that car.

   why do you do this?  why?

And the answer is the same

   for the mamas and the gods and

   the jackoff cutting them off in traffic -

Fuck you, man, fuck you.

The boys have grown so hard this summer.

   They watch the mtv boys whip the clothes off some bitch

   until she's only lips and tits and high heels,

   stripped to cruel simplicity.

And I am afraid.

Love Is

Love Is



No ellipsis or object is necessary.

Love grows.

Beyond our imagining.

Without us.

Love smiles from our wounds,

urges the worm's turn,

licks the lids of the stillborn.

Safe from our ideas

love works to devour us.

For Faith, '73

from the before poems:

(no one cares if the phone rings when they're in the shower now)

For Faith, '73

Yes.

We'll get a house on the ocean.

We'll be so good at our jobs our bosses will say:

"What gems!"

and send us on vacation.

when we're away we'll send each other postcards.

When we get home we'll sit up until 5 a.m. and interrupt each other.

Whenever we want to see some people, there they'll be at the door.

We'll say: 

"Come on in, it's unlocked!"

And the phone will never ring when we're in the shower.

We'll fight.

You'll say: 

"You drink too much, you're fat."

I'll say:

"You clean too much, you're skinny."

You'll get a beer and I'll get a broom

and we'll imitate each other until we laugh.

And the phone will never ring when we're in the shower.

Lovers will come and go.

They will say:

"Too much." and smile.

Or they'll be mean.  They'll say:

"You're ignorant." 

We'll say:  "Ignorance is bliss!"

They'll say:  "Cows."

We'll say:  "Get out of our pasture."

And we'll sit quiet and sad until Adam come home

   with his prize-winning short story and we kiss him and celebrate.

Sometimes a man will stay with one of us.

The other one will fix breakfast and never walk in at the wrong time.

Sometimes men will stay with each of us.

Then we'll make them fix breakfast while we talk.

And the phone will never ring when we're in the shower.

When one of us is depressed the other will say:

"Ain't it a bitch?" and make green and orange salad.

When both of us are depressed we'll sigh and sigh

   until Peter sighs, too, which will make us smile.

We'll have lots of stationery and write long letters

   which friends will save in jewelry boxes and desk drawers.

The cats will have just enough kittens in the basement.

We'll all be full and free.

And the phone will never ring when we're in the shower.

Yes.

Thomas Merton

      There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude.  Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything.  Those who do not love, hate.  In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.  That is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so detestable.  It is hate disguised as love.

***   ***   ***

    A humility that freezes our being and frustrates all healthy activity is not humility at all, but a disguised form of pride.

***   ***   ***

     But as far as solidarity with other people goes, I am committed to nothing except a very simple and elemental kind of solidarity, which is perhaps without significance politically, but which I feel the only kind that works at all.  This is to pick out the people whom I recognize in a crowd and hail them and rejoice with them for a moment that we speak the same language.  Whether they be communists or whatever else they may be.  Whatever they may believe on the surface, whatever may be the formulas to which they are committed.  I am less and less worried by that people say or think they say, and more and more concerned with what they are able to be. 

Amen, Brother Merton, Amen.

One Earring Left

One Earring Left

I came home without the other last night.

Gone, fallen off after twenty years of wear,

bought when being free was new,

after a lunch with wine,

a silver crane, with wings spread.

The moon framed herself in the center pane

of my bedroom window.

She may have known where my crane was,

but was content to stare dumbly at me

as I lay alone with his fingerprints still on me.

By morning light, everything has flown.

I shower and hang the earring

with the other mateless ones.

Why

Why

Futures or numbers,

angles or dollars,

signs or stars -

you think these have brought me to you,

but no.

The boy you were -

alone, on foot,

carrying your mother's groceries each week

in your boy's hands -

has persuaded me.



Amber

Amber

It's my story, too.

Old sap

surrounding something vague,

possibly precious.

Sublimation

Sublimation

She watches the man as he slices rare beef at his wife's table,

balancing the steel knife in his palm.

Feeling the weight and substance of her gaze returned,

her longing spools out its own story.

Leaving their home she moves carefully,

as if he were not inside her,

as if their musk were not rising like incense,

her tongue not running against the grain of his eyebrow,

his soft thumbs not twinned over her nipples.

At home, awake,

she hums, wipes counters, tends to the dogs,

notes each soft step of a fly on her arm;

quickened by the rapture of her own risen blood.

Wild Strawberries

Wild Strawberries

The strawberries we planted years ago

have decamped to live in the lawn.

They keep to themselves

except in spring

when they pop with the yellow flowers
I mow down.

Still they manage to bear

a bright fruit,

perfect, though inedible.

Drizzle

Drizzle

Dog lime in the yard.

A plastic bag open in her right hand.

A newspaper wrapper condomed over her left.

She knows the drizzle

oozes through the roof

of the house at her back.

A seeping pentimento of decay

emerges again and again

on her living room wall.

3/15/2012

Why I Want to Learn to Draw

dispatches from middle age

My sight is fading fast. Every few months I have to buy new, stronger reading glasses. In the you never miss the water 'til the well runs dry mode I now realize how much I've lived in my head. Making up stories. Not seeing what's here. I'm counting on this soft pencil to focus what's left of my light.

Shearing Season

Shearing Season

A fleece arrives in a black plastic bag

in a brown cardboard box

and unfolds in one piece

on the porch, like a white buffalo rug

or a wooly afghan.

The street is quiet and she takes her time

spreading the wool in the sun

and rustling out the dust.

The heat of her hands melts the lanolin

which coats her arms and makes them glisten and smell

of the farm far away.

Soon she will make something of it,

but today

being here in the warm animal presence

is enough.

Over Time

Over Time

Our bodies begin to obey our pleasures

in middle age. Our laps open to receive our loves.

Our eyes dissolve the hard news into soft grey fur.

Even in sleep we weave up dreams

from the colored rags of our days

to soften our steps.

Weaving

Weaving

You have to be ready to touch it all,

to slide your fingers between the warps,

pushing down the weft.

You must kneel, squat, reach

as it demands.

Leave wool alone on the loom

for three days

and it draws evil spirits.

You must love it every moment,

even when you are sick to death of it.

And touch it, even in the places that cut.

The Forest

The Forest

The forest sleeps, wake her up.

The forest sleeps and her children are afraid.

The forest sleeps too long.

The honey is scarce and hard in the hive.

The animals fly through the nets.

The leaves hiss like panthers

as we walk loudly to the village,

clapping and singing songs of no meat.

The forest is sleeping like death.

If we wake her she will feed us.

If we wake her the babies will grow fat.

If we wake her the leaves will cool the huts.

But she grows thin in sleep

and we grow white with dust.

We are her children under the moon.

We slap the bottoms of each other's feet

to keep up our singing.

Before she is more dead.

Before she is completely dead forever.

Visitation

Visitation

Returning to the house he was so recently asked to leave
he waits in the kitchen,
a cup of gas station coffee in his gloved left hand.
She comes down to tell him they won't need him today;
school's called off and she's taking off work.
She offers to refill his cup.
If he has time.
While she runs water
he watches the down
behind her right knee,
the place she always missed while shaving.
Hard already, he unsheathes his hads,
slides them under his old tee shirt,
turns her,
tries to come home.

Love Among Survivors

Love Among Survivors

for AA groups everywhere

Charmed by real love

I commit magic in these streets.

Junkies propose marriage,

rapists place jackets over puddles,

rats sweep my floor.

Sent forth with real love's

awkward text

I wave my hand and

buses arrive on time,

rottweilers belly-up,

roaches slit their own throats.

Grinning,

arms gift-full,

I step into our story.

Back to Civilization

Back to Civilization

for Faith

Sweeping up butterflies

Checking out bloodied eyes

Cleaning the window panes

Kicking off shoes

Women and little boys

Stepping on cats and toys

Building a home again

Burning the blues

Road Trip

Road Trip

Stuck in Stuckey's with trucker's starin',

She's on display in downtown Herrin.

Good Friday

Good Friday

From 12 to 3 you have to sit on the couch

and not do anything.

Our Lord was suffering from 12 to 3

and usually now it rains because the world is sad

about the suffering of Our Lord.

You can't even jiggle your foot

because God the Father will see

and be very sad that you are jiggling

on the day his Son died.

You can't color or even read,

you have to just sit and think about Jesus

and the nails in his hands and feet

and how the soldiers took his clothes off

and how someone poked him with a sword

to see if he was really really dead

and how the blood came out.

It's okay if the dog plays

but you can't throw the ball for her,

because you are the one made in God's image.

And no matter how much you want to go outside

you can't.

You have to sit and think about how

you have it good in this country

with lots of food and cars

and the freedom to worship Jesus however you want.

June Attic

June Attic

Sisters, not mothers,

we lock the attic against

fathers and brothers

and sweat and shine

amongst the dusty quilts

of sisters of a sadder time.

We bathe, close to the moon,

in the gentle lap and ebb that comes

upon sisters in their room,

being one and being other.

Borrower

Borrower

She stopped using him, but she just wouldn't give him away.

She'd leave him like an extra pair

of reading glasses here or there and not miss him

until he turned up again on the sofa.

Even when the Salvation Army would call

she'd forget to donate him.

Or maybe she just didn't consider him clean

and usable anymore.

So I started borrowing him. For the afternoon at first,

then overnight, then days at a time. He fit me perfectly

and I only had to be careful not to wear him

if I thought she'd be at the same party.

One day she'll realize she hasn't come across him

in a while and wonder where he's gotten to,

but by then I'll be able to shrug and say,

"This old thing? I've had him forever."

Thanking My Parts

Thanking My Parts

Now I lay me down to sleep,

my equilibrium to keep.

I thank the parts that make me me

even when they disagree.

The part that prays,

the part that smokes,

the part that tells the dirty jokes,

the part that eats,

the part that reads,

the part that knows my carnal needs.

All the parts that make me tick

flash by me like a grade-B flick.

And if I die before I wake

I hope I get another take.

Her Tattoo

Her Tattoo

based on a true story

A hand's span beneath her belly button

it read:

EAT ME

with an arrow for clarity.

By her ninth month

it was bilboard big and blurry.

Folding back the clinic sheet

the intern saw it

above the baby's crown.

Winter Sun

Winter Sun

1.

We prayed for this, didn't we?

Days and days and days

of darkness dampened us

and we lay limp,

our blackwatch plaid flannel

covered with dog hair.

Praying.

2.

Thank God

I didn't have to tell him how long I've been sober

because I know what he'd think: Why

aren't you better? Why

aren't you well?

3.

The sun. Finally outside

we pick paper

from the crotch of a fallen branch,

shovel old news

burst from its plastic tubing,

and consider how little's left

of fresh or green.

He Finally Knows Love Will Not Save Him

He Finally Knows Love Will Not Save Him

He opens the package in the parking lot of Mailboxes, Etc.,

tosses the wrapper into the back seat

with the rest of his things.

She has knitted him brown gloves.

They fit him perfectly.

He lights a cigarette and stares

into the dark distance

yawning.

Twenty-four Hours Sober

Twenty-four Hours Sober

She battens her vest over breasts

swollen with beer and lovers,

snakes a chipped fingernail through hard hair

to scratch that distant skull

and talks to her kids

left

sleeping like angels,

sucking linty finger finally

after the screaming day.

Dan

Dan

Dan's a man who looks like a boy

in a Gilligan hat

with penguins marching around the band.

With his eyes closed

he recites poetry he learned by heart

when he was a real boy.

He's a psychiatrist now,

pear-shaped from sitting on

other people's problems,

trying to hatch them

into something that can fly.

Schism

Schism

How glad the fissiparous paramecium!

When she cracks

she fashions full families

out of her fractures.

When she tears herself apart

she produces a happy proliferation

of her own point of view.

How sad for us

having risen above her,

to have pulled ourselves together

to stand so alone.

New England Heart

New England Heart

February and the daffodils are nosing

through my midwestern lawn,

February rain bringing March flowers.

Leaving school the path is daylit and people

warble good byes, arms waving from open cars.

Bicycles are dusted; children lose their hats.

It's all wrong.

My New England heart wants

to return to her own dark kitchen

where yellow light puddles

like warm tallow on the oil cloth;

wants to boil beans, soaked and swollen

to tenderness, until they slip

from their jackets,

smoke and shimmy.

Fixing a Drawer

Fixing a Drawer

Pull the wreckage over the runner.

Unload the corn holders and spatulas,

jar opener and three-to-two adapter.

Take time to remember

the fight you had with your ex.

Attempt to squirt glue into the slot

without pulling the drawer apart.

Pull the drawer apart the rest of the way.

Sit on the floor. Try to cry.

Quickly pour glue into every crevice

while simultaneously realizing that you must

sell the house and move into an apartment

as soon as you get your unemployed brother to move out

and put a couple of the dogs to sleep.

As the glue drips onto the tile,

hold the sides of the drawer together

which will allow you to feel the particle board

disintegrating.

Keep the pressure on while you wipe

at the drips, coating your hands and pants

with a new, swiftly stiffening skin.

This is your life.

Getting the Picture

Getting the Picture

The writer apologizes to the women.

He thinks we don't get the picture.

We sit next to you in class, discussing linguistic properties

without seeing this curve of muscle or that cheekbone;

without imagining your long thigh, hard and haired over;

without watching your penis uncurl

and plump in our palms like warm dough,

your eyes defocusing with pleasure;

without feeling your fingers slide

into the sides of our mouths;

without tensing our tongues

as if licking the last salty drops of you.

Well we do.

We just don't know how to talk about it.

Call

Call

I've got the telephone

cradled against my shoulder

and through the receiver,

soft and pushy like the cat's cheek

or Nat King Cole's voice

you keep saying

It's going to be all right.

I'm going to be all right.

I'm hanging onto the telephone,

a black voice speaking to me from

a black space where the inevitable

might not happen tonight.

Mouse's End

Mouse's End

Mother, farm bred and practiced,

fills the bucket to the very top

while staring in the direction of

the grey green greasy ceramic tile--

too good to replace yet.

The cage is sent for.

My sister returns, sobbing and stumbling,

stepping on the chalky white polish of her own shoes.

My father, the still center of the storm,

sits in gaping cotton boxer shorts

with his head forward, saying

"It's the most humane thing.

Now get your father a beer."

My sister sets the cage down,

delivers the beer, wills herself invisible.

We're ready.

Whitey drops head first

into the cold tap water.

Mother clamps the scratched plate on.

A roiling,

then the gift of silence.

Recognition

Recognition

The sun is the eye of the fish of the sky

that flips its tail in mirth.

The river's the gill of the fish of the hill

that swims within the earth.

Toads that fly,
birds that dive,

horses of the sea,

dogs that climb,

baboons' behinds,

are all I know of me.

And God is the mother of me and the other

connecting the freak with the fair,

so when you hide your eyes inside

I vanish in thin air.

The Therapy Rag

The Therapy Rag

Apologies to Tom Lehrer for stealing the Vatican Rag's skeleton

First you do some primal screams

Kill your mommy in your dreams

Find out who you really hate and

separate, separate, separate

Own your anger, watch the hooks

thrown out by emotion's crooks

Do you resent your daughter?

Well, you know you oughter

Doing the therapy rag

I'm okay and so are you

To your own adult be true

Get rid of guilt, there is no sin, you're

born to win, born to win, born to win

Went to the bank took out a loan

and now my integrated selfs my own

And when she sees me

Oh how she frees me

Doing the therapy

Demand you be fair to me

No one takes care of me

Doing the therapy rag

Not Jumping

Not Jumping

The wanting to die dies hard.

Not that I really want to.

I can be happy -

taking the dog with me to the Post Office,

smelling the first wood fires of the season -

but when I cut back on the viaduct

I freeze.

Well, I make it across,

but I have to talk to the dog

the whole way to keep

from stepping over the rail.

Or I'm driving to work,

singing Birds do it, bees do it

and a semi passes

and I have to clamp my hands tight

to keep from steering into that space under the trailer.

I'm pretty sure my car's small enough to fit.

People think I'm skittish,

afraid of heights and speeds and such,

but I'm telling you

that's not exactly it.

The Former Beauty

I. Ready

The former beauty turns a few greying heads

as she enters the bar.

Her skirt is tight and she's still not wearing underwear

because her mother told her

"always be ready." And she is,

though her husband hasn't touched her in months.

She waits,

folding her hair over and over

with her hand.

II. A Coup

The former beauty is tan again this summer,

blonder and able to get into her thin jeans, too.

At the veterinarian's office

she sits with her golden retriever

absently stroking his head and ears.

The young vet emerges to scan the waiting room.

In her direction his gaze pauses,

a dancer suspended at the apex of his leap,

and moves on.

III. On the Street

A beautiful young man sits on the curb

outside the grocery.

The former beauty thinks for a moment

he might be a boy she dated a few times in college.

Oh, but that was more than twenty year ago,

this could be his son.

Unnoticed, she watches him from her car.

He is waiting for the girl

with the blue tattoo

carelessly pricked onto the flawless skin

of her left shoulder.

IV. Shopping

The former beauty keeps her eyes down as she pushes the cart

so no one knows she is moving her legs around a longing

she no longer believes she deserves.

No one knows she's watching

snapshots of his wrist, his shirt sleeve rolled back,

exposing a scrape from something in his life,

about which she knows nothing;

and the other thing, so palpable, impossible.

She lowers herself onto him

but even in her mind her body is ridiculous.

In the produce a boy stacks bananas carelessly.

The bruises will develop once she gets them home,

once they ripen. This boy. If she asked him

would he run? Stare and breathe through his mouth

in disbelief? Fear? Would he smile?

She has no idea what is possible anymore.

She buys avocado, palming the wrinkled skin,

and eggplant, rubbing its smooth purple.

She holds an unwashed grape in her mouth.

Maybe she could ask someone. Casually.

Ask someone about whom she cares nothing

what is possible? And read the answer

in his careful pauses.

V. At the Reception

The former beauty is seated at the extra women's table.

Silently

she slides her thumb under the heavy necklace of rose quartz,

lifts the beads to her lips

and marvels at the warmth left from her breasts.

VI. At the Mirror

The former beauty pulls at the sides of her face

and realizes she'll never wear flowers in her hair again.

No longer possible, the fair Ophelia

mad with love and beautiful in madness.

Now she is Ophelia Dredged,

puffy and pale,

no longer in love or mad.

VII. In the Yard

In her fat nephew's cast off shorts and tee shirt

the former beauty weeds the front flower bed.

The cool breeze brushes the sun's heat

from the back of her neck.

The sedum is the last thing in bloom.

She cuts her hand on a dry daylily leaf,

sucks the blood.

A car of teenaged boys drives by.

They honk, yell something.

She waves with her injured hand,

assumes she must know them from somewhere,

and returns to her day's work.

Proposals

Fall Romance

I want to marry a terrorist,

get grit in my khakis

while I squat to pack munitions,

a blush of gunpowder on my cheek.

When we rut

I want to be hardly there at all,

a crater burnt and sifted after.

Knowledge

I want to marry a machinist,

to stand on the lot of the plant

in my hard had and visitor's badge watching

while he fits metal together,

measuring it carefully once it's in place.

I'll wear pink lipstick and a cotton dress

and bring baskets of warm cornbread

he can pass around.

For lunch we'll sit

on upturned buckets side by side

and his coveralls will smudge my thigh.

When they whistle as I walk away

he will smile at his steel-toed boots,

knowing what he knows.

Invention

I want to marry a used car salesman.

We'll make up stories

about the people who will drive

away in the Camaro or the Escort wagon

as we soap the windshields -

Real Honey, Runs Good, 1 Owner.

On Saturdays I'll dress up in the bear suit

and wave to the people driving by

in their old beaters.

As we leave the lot every night

we'll pick a different car,

depending on how we feel and

drive away

into the Porsche-red sunset.

Travel

I want to marry a nomad,

feed him greasy meat

wrapped in flat bread

cooked on a hot rock.

I want to smell rain

and know when to put up

the beasts.

I want to be sold for spices or camels.

When I come to my new husband

I want to spit and curse his eyes

before I dance.

Thank you UMSL

Thank you to UMSL on Retirement

When I was a little hippie girl neither I nor anyone who knew me well expected me to live beyond the age of 25. My career path consisted of sex, drugs, rock and roll, dying young, and leaving some brilliant poems letting the world know how badly I'd been treated.

You can imagine, therefore, my dismay when I woke, or to be more accurate, came to, on my 30th birthday. My plan was not working out at all. Apparently it is harder to kill an Irish woman than I had thought. I decided to quit trying. I cleaned up and started looking for a life.

It was at this juncture that I got into the 1970 VW Beetle with the (as my mechanic once put it) stickers and shit all over it and drove to the UMSL campus and took a job as a word processor. I decided to work at a college campus because the only time I had been vaguely happy to that point was during my 7 short years as an undergraduate.

For the past 24 years UMSL has been my community and in many ways my family. I've made lifelong friends and had loving, patient mentors. Frankly, I've learned everything I know about being a grown up either here or in one of my many support groups.

What did I learn? I learned to show up for work. I learned to believe in public education. I learned that I could learn. I learned that I could be wrong and live. I learned that the smartest and most accomplished people are often the kindest and most generous. I learned there's no substitute for actually doing my job, no matter what kind of mood I'm in that day. I also learned that if you bang a phone on your desk you can actually break it, but we won't talk about that today. Most of all I learned that there is great joy in being of service.

These may not seem like big life lessons to you, but they changed my life.

Since 1983 I have had the privilege of working with all of you and of being of service to many students. You have given me a place to live the life I was looking for when I got here. I has been an amazing ride and I thank each of you from the very bottom of my heart.

At 77

At 77

Coyote has a chest tube

strung from lung to plastic bag,

a ginger colored liquid trickling.

He's prickly and not too clean,

carved down to sinew

and spots and yellow teeth.

He's denned himself in

and doesn't want much company.

I rub his shoulders, feel how

the muscles have let go of the joint.

The nurse comes in and he snarls,

rolling his eyes behind her back

to show me he knows what he's doing.

He's alpha still

through bed rails and morphine;

holds up the bottle

to show me how much he's peed.

The Sisters

The Sisters

The idiot sisters who live in my attic

are keeping me awake again and I want some rest.

They dress themselves in lengths of fabric, pretend

they are in gowns, capes, boas, and tromp around

to some new play they've written. In the midst of this

romance one of them will remember some old imagined slight

and throw herself down, wracked with sobs on the threadbare

horsehair sofa, which reminds the others of the play,

causing the lot of them to shriek in excruciating delight.

To shut them up I bring them gifts of cupcakes, candies,

plates of cheeses and bowls of potatoes over which they coo

for a while. Then the fair one wants to save some for later

and the dark one wants to give some away and the redhead

wants to eat it all now and they're into another awful row.

I even taught them to smoke, a quiet, peaceful hobby.

They prefer cherry cigars, puffing on them dramatically

while they don fedoras and write mystery novels, pounding

away on their old Underwood. Anything will set them off.

I went downtown to get them evicted. I thought I could sign

something, get a restraining order so they would restrain themselves,

but I was told I can't because we're related. So we're in negotiation.

I've hired a mediator. On Tuesdays, when we all get together

I try to calm them down; they try to make me laugh.

Don't Read This

Don't Read This

For god's sake, put down the book

and do something useful.

Open a window, blow the stink off;

stir fry up some fresh vegetables,

call a friend to join you for dinner;

buy a card for someone who's sick;

go outside and get some exercise,

you're pale and going to flab, look

at those thighs!; wash your kitchen floor,

it's full of dog hair, bird seed hulls

and muddy footprints; and walk that dog,

she's getting tired of sitting home

with nothing to do but eat the crotch

out of your old underpants; light a candle,

say a prayer for the dead or the living

or for yourself, somewhere in between.

A Hard Right

A Hard Right

Corn bends close

Gears gum with chatt

Motes hang motionless

Light pierces the eye

Grasshoppers fly into spokes

Thistles prick calves

We waiver in the turn

I can see now it's uphill

from here to the place

where I tell you good bye.

Evening Shift

Evening Shift

The easy laughter of working men

drifts into my back window.

At once I am 18, the girl from the office

taking a smoke break in a smear of fluorescent light

outside the hissing factory.

I want to be an artist in black

who has everything she needs

but with the sweat running down the small of my back

in this too-short polyester dress

it is too easy to joke;

easy to pick the one with the wallet wife

and the key to his buddy's place;

easy to give him the one thing

without seeming to want to;

easy to pretend I care a little

until I walk out to the cab at dawn

and don't look back.

Reflections on a Winter Window

Reflections on a Winter Window

I stand before the glass- a shocking sight,

too white, too big in stocking cap and coat

and glasses, too. Is this the girl who wrote:

I'm God's frail angel, trembling toward the light?

I could not be this woman in the pane -

What would she know of trembling heavenly bliss?

If I'd known back when that I would look like this

I'da put a bullet in my trembling brain

And missed the snow upon the redbud tree.

And missed the sleeping spaniel's velvet ear.

And missed the graceful green frivolity

that rises at the turning of each year.

For though this flesh may less than sold be

I thank it for the love it's shown me here.

Surely

Surely

for Dr. Shirley Martin

based on a true story

At the invitation of the Shah's people she set out

for an adventure abroad taking

10 uniforms

3 pair of good American shoes

2 identical white cardigans

and her mother, who would find clean water,

bargain for melons, and train the help.

Square and blonde she moved briskly

through Labor and Delivery trying to discern

the structure of the system

as women arrived, chose empty beds

and quietly let her know when they were ready.

As the baby came, the nursery girl

would write the mother's name

on its forehead with a grease pencil.

Several times a day the babies were brought

and mothers' names called out.

If there were many Maras, the baby

would be carried from one to the next

until its mother was found.

Some days she would visit the nursery

after her shift, brushing babies' black hair

with her small white fingers,

crooning their mothers' names to them

in a language they would never speak.

Once, puzzled by clean faces,

she asked the nursery girl

Why no names on the babies by the heater?

The mothers had left. They had too many.

Or too many girls.

Her own mother told her to bring them all home.

More realistic, she presented a plan to the Director.

Milk could be expressed, agencies involved.

Fingers making the church and the steeple,

he explained it was impossible.

She never visited the nursery again

but served her time efficiently,

telling herself over and over,

like a prayer sung out in the marketplace:

Surely this one

sliding into my hands

will be delivered.

Friendship

Friendship

A button gone,

a drunken thrust,

our time ends,

clean as a suicide,

painless until public.

The vision turns back

counterclock

dissolves in a fiery breath.

When I Was a Boy

When I Was a Boy

Back when I was the boy of the family

I used to jiggle step in my father's shadow all Saturday.

At the barber shop there were Hulk comics

and pictures of ladies in their nighties

and I learned to say JEEEEEESUS Christ

and not make it sound like a prayer, either.

We'd go to the bar to sit in cool darkness

and drink 7-Up right out of the bottle.

I learned jokes and shaking hands with the guys.

Or we'd go fishing - catching pumpkin seeds or clumps of grass.

I had to be quiet then, but it was serious quiet and easy,

not like mom's nap quiet when I always needed stuff.

And we'd sit together against a tree.

Blue eyes and brown eyes didn't make us different then

like breasts did later.

Oh, we were a club, just us two.

At night he washed my little hands in his big ones

and dried them hard,

even between my fingers.

Hauling My Father Away

Hauling My Father Away

The man who hauled my father away

arrived at the trailer park in a black Chevy Blazer

with funereal curlicues painted on the back window.

The trailer was disintegrating, my father was big

and though it was a grey February day

the man was sweating in his black polyester.

When the wheel on the gurney hit the hole on the floor

my father flopped sideways like a tuna

trying to catapult itself out the door.

My brother and I laughed

in spite of ourselves.

We were so tired.

And our father was so gone.

For My Father, Five Years Dead

For My Father, Five Years Dead

I said I love you as I left that day.

You didn't hear me say it, I suspect.

I'd turned to go and the machines were in the way

and I wasn't even sure it's what I meant.

The dark familial clutter clears away

as years and failures all my own amass.

I say I love you easier today,

not just because you are not coming back.

Letter

Letter

Mama, I'm awful tired

and I feel like coming home

to eavesdrop on the ocean

and spit into the foam.

I talk to people on busses,

spend all my tips on books,

tell lies to good looking customers

and cheer for all the crooks.

I listen to jazz all evening,

I forget to sleep or eat.

There's a brown dog from the junkyard

who attacks me on the street.

My friends aren't.

My lover doesn't.

My work is.

My party wasn't.

Out here in the heartland

even the cows are bored,

and I'd commit hara-kiri

if I could afford the sword.

Irish Is Dying

Irish Is Dying

Irish is dying,

so Pat and I, roots deep in the peat,

are off to community college to save it.

We learn

there are consonants, slender and broad.

Slender as in si, pronouced she.

Broad as in gaoth, pronounced gway.

Nouns are declining around us

and nothing is as it seems.

Teach looks easy, until it turns into tschalk.

Shibh, impossible to puzzle out,

turns out to be shiv, something I'm ready to use.

We learn

to say "Is anyone at all satisfied?"

and "He is happy, but she is not happy."

both of which we commit to memory,

knowing they'll be useful in Dublin or Belfast.

We learn

there are very few speakers of Irish

left in Ireland.

And none at all

at community college.

Catholic Toilet Paper

Catholic Toilet Paper

The building my new office is in

used to be a convent.

Everything we say in our little cubicles

can be heard clearly in the hall,

as if Mother were still pacing,

Rosary ticking,

alert for Special Friendships

or overzealous penances.

She doesn't want us

using much toilet paper, either.

There's a hidden stopper on the roller

so we think we're free

to pull as much as we want,

but instead we get

just a little less than we need.

Postcard

Postcard

Our ghosts ripen within us

making us tender.

Looking behind,

the brown hills bruise

with distance.

Gone Gone Gone

Gone Gone Gone

The scenery falls too fast

from this inexorable train;

pastures, houses,

signs unreadable,

license plates unidentified.

When did they tear that down?

People, too, moving,

twist themselves out of our arms

and run;

take the long, easy glide

from the sky

into that little pond,

there on the left,

gone.

Even our dead,

bodies stilled,

are taken,

disposed of,

gone.

Speeding on,

our bodies rebel,

cramp,

tear

as if it were our own flesh

gone.

The Purpose of Deer

The Purpose of Deer

"I can understand God's purpose for most animals, but what is the purpose of deer?"

Julie at Lake Alice

I. April, 1983

I carry my knees like broken sparrows to Garth's kitchen.

Garth whirls up milk and honey for ulcer burn,

picks gravel from knee meat, bandages elbows.

I beat out droning Saturday morning litany:

don't know, can't remember, never saw before . . .

I have stopped even pretending emotions;

I'm no longer shuffling that old dance.

I am a single mechanical note

sounding on the current of that hot juice.

I am beyond shame or gratitude,

beyond the whole writhing maggoty mass of my humanity.

I have leapt clear of the wreckage of heart and mind;

I hang suspended above it on an amber thread.

Wrist scars, cigarette burns, childhood bruises,

all B&O railroad quaint from this height.

My hated father and I have never been so alike

or so separate;

we are identical objects under glass.

This is completely predictable tragedy

in glaring black and white.

The buzz saw edges closer.

Cut to the heroine struggling.

Her mouth opens, but you hear nothing.

II. September, 1983

A new movement has begun. There is no score.

The ripe moon of this season exposes

real heroes without names

riding in and out of my white rooms.

I claim to be rebuilding myself,

stretching my limbs at this transformed barre,

but I begin to see the gift

these people slyly leave on the counter

while I talk, talk, talk from the other room.

The gift is a secret about who we are.

It is this.

Clinging to the hem of existence,

dragged by gravity,

logic pointing the other way,

we push upward.

We do not turn on each other like beasts

but share bread and bear witness.

Under the milk-filled moon

we do not howl for the dead,

but dance.

Longing

Longing

"for your husband shall be your longing, though he have dominion over you." Genesis 3:16

So this is the plan:

this throb,

this molten river coursing

from nipple to belly

as she watches the husband return

from the garden.

She kneads floury biscuits

at the window,

an amethyst bracelet of bruise

appearing and disappearing

into her cotton sleeve.

And this:

this portion of spirits

the husband allows himself,

erasing ache and knowledge.

On the way to lunch

he calls each restless beast by name

and tucks his bottle

into its straw cradle

knowing he'll return.

Late, in their unforgiving bed,

she rends his back,

he pounds her prow of bone,

longing.

Men at the Laundry

Men at the Laundry

Four men at the laundromat together,

uniform in white shirts and ties,

hair trimmed like lawns.

Moonies, maybe, or Mormons,

not hard enough for the service.

Their glasses reflect the sun.

Yes, I decide, Christians,

looking for a sanitary theology.

I am a happy beast before them.

With my blood clotted cottons,

my flea bites and sweat,

I claim this flesh

from which they fell

and into which

at sunset

they slide like fish.

She Hopes She Is/She Prays She's Not

She Hopes She Is/

She Prays She's Not

She hopes she is;

she prays she's not.

She makes coffee,

drains the pot.

Feels sick. A sign. A sign?

She recalls the lip-biting grin,

the double nod;

imagines them quickened

to a piscean reality.

She turns her mind, willfully,

and still it returns, returns

to that dark pool.

She sleeps and hears waves.

She works and hears little whale calls.

She is a gate.

She is a cove.

She is dumb as a sea cave;

waiting to be startled

by the life within

or the blood emerging.