Midsummer - when the children
fold the fields with their
flowers and their warmer love.
Waiting, waiting for a girl to call.

Summer - I saw as the briefcase mobs beat
the sidewalk clay until it dries. Still drying
out from the sake last Friday; like hanging fish, limp like mother’s washing,
Calling, calling their lover on sizzling metal lines in the cloudless, blue sky.

My life - short skirts with petunias lined up with a girlish fever,
Never caring for leather and suits blasting out on the TV shop,
Peridots on my mind, sweet roses and candied sesame.
Sizzling, sizzling like weathered, withering Western waters.

-

Childhood - I saw it flash a million lifetimes
ago - every hour a red sun’s kissing blur -
while father’s out on the open waters, dwindling, diving nose-first - a warrior.
Weathered, weathered like the bottoms of ships beating the blinking seas.

Atomic - my life as it whistled before me -
All went silent before his deafening blast,
Kites singed by a little boy’s blunt force - he
Left me blinking, blinking for my cracked heart to fill out like gold kintsugi.

Like a Kennedy, I smiled for a good photo op,
never missed a meeting, sat pretty on my florals
and the ribbons between my thighs.

Young - 16 - with a silvered ring squeezing my babied fingers;
They all loved me - I brought buckets of pastel
to their castle.

My eyes changed the game - I swear -
A million girls wore my eyeliners, my shoes, my dresses -
down to my knickers - how did they know? I’ve not a single clue.

But that all came with his rage. Cris-crossed, arms locked, doors
blocked - can’t escape. Pap-shots, AIDS-clots, hair chopped, tours clocked, dazzling,
dizzying, maddening.

He said “No waistline” so I threw it up in my bowl. Don’t push me.
I would have “No life” if I had
“Thick thighs”. Might as well die alone

in a quiet country home with ballerinas spinning on the telly, saying; ‘I was that
beautiful once’ to my children. Really, I was! Soon, grandchildren playing
paper planes like flowery fighter jets blooming in puffy rolling fields… Only without

the landmines. I wish they’d only be mine. I can see it in their marble eyes -
they don’t know what I’ve seen. Down in black cellars, golden catacombs
of an institution’s design, turning my ocean’s eyes to brown, inky darkness. Never look back.

Soul-snatched. My twenties, robbed by
world tours, his filthy women and
filthier crowns - centuries-old blood sewing stones to gold atop my head.

They don’t know about that woman breathing down my open back, heating my
rhinestone tiaras until the adhesive loosens,
diamonds to ****. Still couldn’t get free of it - even now.

-

When I’m away from the children, out in the blue -
White yachts whisk me to Cannes, Gibraltar, Spain;
The blue only reminds me of them.
My world swivels in their four, wide eye sockets, with turquoise metallic koi swimming
in mine, wide black pupils opening up like a dreamy midsummer night’s sky.

So, what else could I do but ring them twice a day?
How was school? How was math? Don’t stay out too late! But one day I had a hunch -  
I never got to ever make them a hot packed lunch, or iron their laundry

before I saw them off.

In the blinding tunnel, I held on tight,
Wings flashing, waiting for sunlight to
lead me back home -
Either on heaven or on Earth.

I made my life an art, a career;
A gold star among black skies glowing
******-red.

I was his queen. Still am, though
He kept women in our bedroom closet while I wept.
I was delicate back then.

But Page Six and The Times had me
on my toes. Marilyn, Marlene, Judith - Dave Powers running
a knife down from my crown to my hips, brushed it off with a hair flip.

Young Marilyn wants my crown.
Young Marlene wants my money.
Young Judith wants my soul.

I let Marilyn take my crown; I don’t want blood on my sleeve -
I let Marlene take my money; I don’t care for empty parties -
I let Judith take my soul; I lost it along the way with all

the drinks and doleful dinners - a banquet with this
man and that Duke, and the other dunce from that foreign country
in the South China Sea because we have agreements here and there and everywhere.

Marilyn can have Saigon for all I care.
Marilyn can stain the White House red with blood; bombed and bucketed
with orange flares.

She can take my man to share,
She can rip me to shreds with diamond fingers tearing at Jack’s coat;
Loving, lusting, shaking, shivering - daring.

But she can never take away my wedding day.
She can never scrub away his sticky blood
on my pink tweed ’till I lay to rest beside him.