Seedy weejuns and mule slippers flopped fast
across the cold dewed lawn, laps of breath puffs
churned.  Doing what we did best
burning off the night air, welcoming dawn.

There might have been a time
When I wasn’t full of fear so topped off
Like a gassy sombrero
like a burrito left in the
Sun to bake and there might have
Been a
Time
When I hadn’t yet eaten a burrito
landlocked
In New England, locked in a small state of
Fear and knowing that knowing
just isn’t
Enough.
There might have
Been
A time when luxury was a nickel
apiece paperback
Book at the Unitarian Church fall sale
to raise funds for
Their roof.
To raise their
Roof.
And there
Might
Have been a joy in my spark
Plugs,
A joy
In my canter
A Joy in
My legs that preceded my
Fears.
There might
Have
Been a time:
When I would pick one of the seven records we owned
And delicately put it on the turntable, thinking I will
Have my own money and
buy my own music.
When I idly lift the leaded paint
from the 200 year old wood
And scratch it to smell its sweet aroma.
And put my hand on the glass pane
Think hard enough and open your eyes and it will be
1838 again.
Oh where are the people?
Oh where
when there might have been a time
Did I not see who they are?
Or they did not register.
I must have watched them everyday
Observant
so keen to be seen
Is it possible to feel so much
for feeling so little?
Or did I feel gulfs of embrace
that were not there?
I wanted and I desired and I dug.
I craved and thought and speculated
and clung.
And there might have
Been
A time when I roared on my Schwinn down the long empty
Roads of my town.
Invoking our gods.
Invoking my claims.
There was a time when I stuttered with
Compassion and could
feel a touch observed
There was a time:
Across the street in a
lit house at dusk.
Their curtains are open, their lights are on.
Oh, the sun has settled down
There is that time, golden, when I
Look into your kitchen, and the wallpaper is
Blue and harvest gold with small pictures of oil lamps on
Them and your walls are mustard gold.
Your plates are unbreakable
I see them lustre in the
Overhead light, fashioned like a wagon wheel.
Guns ablazin’.
Trails awash.
There might be a time when I can slip back
Into your kitchen
lick the plates and then
Run my fingers over
the wall paper.
Tracing the outline of the oil
lamps imprinted.

Petty theft of pretty poetry so
taut like my buttocks when I was twenty
and did not appreciate the ripeness of my
flesh.
Or this – about an orange peel –
the white is bitter the spits of oil
not iridescent as oil might be
lazed
in a parking lot puddle.
Try for size the heavy fur of
winter cottages, blah except for
holiday wreaths and the silent exhalation of
smokes snaking from their
top.
Translate this grapefruit that is both
sour and sweet
and fulminates
loss.

Strangers fall in love, zap arc light
others grab, finger dumb only to repel
those held most dear.
Seeing and sawing, gnawing ankles off in
polar bear trapped hugs.
You’ve heard this one before:
North pole lures south pole onto an ice floe, pushes her
with his toe out to sea.  
SOS magnetic flux girdles her majesty.
She drags him, dinghy wed, out bound channel
past buoys and cruise ships and seals.

Chant with me. The words. Mea
Culpa. I am sorry it’s almost always
English.  Je suis desolee.
But, the Power
of our club is your language and mine are blood kin.
I may not understand your meaning, but if you’re writing:
I will get your Drift.

You walked your dog in early morning
suburban calm
of hubbed parking lots, sprawled lawns
humming.

In knee tall grass imagining
your neighbors brewing a fresh *** and
pulling their curtains
wide.
I crouch obscure

knee bent, tree nestled.
My heart sings:
You, grin, grimace
The air stings
my notes strung
affix my lips to there.

Best wishes I offer at this time
I will observe the court order and
you look so handsome from here.

Chump knuckles down, brings it on
to blow a dandelion head clean off
with one large exhalation
of love.

Say that we are enemies
Arch-eyed sharp means you ridicule.
You don’t get what our spit means to each other.
You mah frick; I you frack.
Yolo contendere, peace out bella pie.

Visiting my parents I learned
that I am being played,  a game
in which I am board and piece and ****** weapon.
When a picture of me sulky toddler evokes “You always hated me”
roots uncurl hibernated spores stored
through my salad days and youthful spring.
Broach the soil as I ****, ankles grabbed,
leg-locked planted firm reaching.
What do you think grows down there? Digging has
turned up rotted fibers, matted hairs and husks.

Nervous that way I take peanut butter from the jar
where blinking and licking overlap
messily and focus is the last thing on
my mind.

There, just there scooped
is where the thought
returns.

No high flying; no explanation
just back, and the jar gets
put on the shelf of the
cupboard
of wood, the oldest part of the house,
and I cannot recall to write it the smell of
peanuts jarred and ant poison and southern
yellow
pine.

Hello Alfred where ya bin?
Cruising aisles of memories tinned, a good deal
thinner when you last checked in.
Back slapped worn, born of songs between
your ears, evenings out are scrims on which
you show your friends what is what and what they fear.
Oh you pickled miscreant.
I dare you.  Eat me.  All up.

The day we roared with infinite jest the
larder packed tight with provisions burst.
So much canned meats, tinned, pemmican
hardtack we had stored knowing our
journey north would be sufficiently trying
that sustenance would prove difficult.

The slog.  The slacking day when you rolled
off the sled, creviced.  Your voice booming blue
crystalline as we see, no escape.  Trapped and
the cans I hurl into the hole.

Hours I read to you lipped, curled into a
snail, a shell, a crocus of yellow
a dread of
finishing the story and saying to you there is
no
more.  So you cannot tell, when the pages have ended
I make up confabulate truth and fiction
embellish.  
Pretend the story line marches
forward decades and we are in the Amazon;
You’ve discovered
that the water
that seemed
guileless is crocodile filled.
They bite hard and
you can imagine.

All primary colors on the
floes, all glacial movement, slow to melt, fast to burn through
the colors of our arctic rainbow.
I had primed the lamp the last night, before that dawn, before
the ride in which you fell.  
The wick trimmed and each
consequential action of the day I placed
hanks of hair
neatly side by side into banks of snow.  
Under my cracked tongue is
a bump that rolls
mole like cyst.  

Partner of my travels to this cold realm, your self shelved.
Below:  Did you hear me whisper?  Asking why today
have I become.  
The whispered promise of holding
upright against the dark.  I thought.
It would be magnificent.  

Not even fanfare.  Or aurora borealis.  Or flight.
Yes dreams of flying.  
Yes dreams of ahah so it is after all.
I thought I would recognize the moment of unleashing.  
What makes the special now?
If I whisper Abandon I might hear you echo in the ice.  I might see your
boot, attached to.  A glove alone, unpaired.

The story they lived, the story they tell is one of each husky,
one by one, no longer.  Starvation and then there are none.
But we are in the Amazon, and it is a scorching hot day and there is
much to be explored until you fall into the river and get bit.

I take it all back.  
You laugh because I add flying monkeys which is
us pretending that we’ve explored
this terrain which looks like a bed
in a room and a chart.  
They cannot
stop your bleed, and so we begin again.

The moat where we keep watery fowl
afloat feeding them cracked corn
scattered from our parapets.
Repaired the dry rot in the gate, got the
drawbridge working, again…it rusts.
There is dust, makes us sneeze.
Stumble over stones, look at masons
askance.  Threaten grain withholding
(hint:  barley) unless they
make ‘em flush.
How fun to keep
the keep
shiny.

I shred the beets.
Heads of red flicks in the bowl
parged of white now rosé, blushes.
To say the word properly is to nestle the
tongue in the church of the mouth the nave
of clucks tucked under the roof of the palate to
squeeze conjoined shushes and birch noises.
To steam to steep
with the lazy roil of the soup.
Do you recall the crunch of the snow outside our dacha?
The days where ice coated crusts cut
galoshes
sloshed.
The tureen beckons with its fractures.
To predict the future merely gaze into the soup.
How is this to see
a winter of bread and shavings
of fibers sewn rough
of tough, tough coughs that spray rose
petals in the dawn?

Let me open the door for you he insists, a kindness born
from misunderstandings of power and luxuries, like this,
Grab the handle and pull hard toward me.  Standing dumb like a
stone easter-islanded headed fool, voice will out me, crackle of
Fury, but instead Why Thank You, honeys, sashays. Inside there’s
push off, rub off, get off, quick little deaths.  Pebbles in my shoe.

No, that’s not how it goes.  It goes like this:
Step out of time, skin suit fold carefully on the bed or the shore of
a river and now test the waters with toe stubbed broken.
Gentle there soft, marsh daubed clays, inanimate reeds brown, hollowed,
Place one gently between tongue and cheek.  Sink into the river, tilt head
Breath through reed.

Can you imagine every day iterate? Repetition? Repeat the old rage?
Practice a minuet or tackle the sonnet form, line by line?
How does one get to Carnegie Hall?  This too has become play, become fodder, become the one I am becoming.
Undone and I wish to step away, from the curb and push, push me under. A car, or truck or bus.  Taxi me ferried to the farther shore. wait there.

Under my arm a fiddle case.  Fumble the latch open and beautiful!
The gasp the wish the harm in lusting for want.  Want and rage merry friends take hold and shove.  I asked to be shoved and I am shoven.  Small tiny violin plays angsty melody for me, pour moi, pourbois.
I will play for tips.  I will play for your half of half uneaten sandwiches.  Want and rage and rhyme.  Meter has it in for me.  
Half beats and internal lusts, magnetic poles attracting and repellent. I watch.  My goal was to extract myself.  
My goal was to be serene and write.

In the best case scenario:
Tonight’s sky lusted with Comae Berenices entwines two perspectives
that converge then diverge, with one asking how may I help you seemingly sincere and yet there is the price tag of submission, and the other accepts that rejecting this kind offer will precipitate another cascade of stars wishing them frantic, de-glowing each, as they fall from the clouds.  May Day May Day May Day.

1. Maternal worry of not having a corpse to bury:
Don’t go to the quarry. You’ll cramp and sink and wedge into
a ledge and divers will not find you until next spring.  
Oh yes fueled concern fed by the loss of another child we did not know.
If I told you Ma that we were all going
there most summer days and there we perfected our sailor dives:
Would you smile or smack us silly?

#2. Maternal worry of not having a
corpse to bury.  You’ll explode and sink and drop into the ocean
and divers will not find you until debris-bombed waves bob.  Oh yes
fueled concern fed by the loss of other children we did not know.
I tell you Ma we were all there:
that’s how we perfected our sailor dives
in flight, flightless plunged.

Sitting in a circle itchy patchy cross legged
hearing the feet passing the scratchy
the whoosh brush of almost hands
at our backs

In my dream it crept then lapped across
the stream in which my boyfriend the photo-
grapher was expounding on new ideas for grinding
lenses.  Large black dragging teats and sloping
back, with brown knobs
tumors protruding from
its chest and shoulder.

Then it stopped and fell there across the rivulet.
The size of a carry-on bag, fur matted fake and
flakey as it peeled in places.  Who ran to it? I did and
touched grit and hair and bumps. Thinking:
Get it to the vet
We can take it home
I can nurse it back to health.
Jim said: I’m not sure it’s a cat…..

This confusion.  Is it a cat? Or
something we do not know yet, an oddity
exhausted, too far gone, ready to birth
new ideas and breeds the like of which we’ve
never seen.  I would like to make it my pet or if
too far gone wear its little pelt.

Wallace Stevens
Wazzup?
With the widows and the maidens?
The name
dropping
the distancing vocabulary that
we scurry to look up
look up
train our eyes
train.
If I came into your office, in downtown
Hartford a city
I knew framed - as my father grew up in
Wethersfield always said
be careful –
downtown Hartford is
not a good place to be alone.
So I saunter, prink, and
perambulate
plonk myself
past your receptionist.
A widow?
And she’d holler:
-Mr. Wallace I asked her to stop!
And your desk which you requested almost 15 years ago
already looks out of date in too heavy oak is
caught between us, a horizontal surface filled
with paper.
There will be one sentence.
And one exclamatory remark.
-Wallace, you’re only human -  you put your pants on
one leg at a time.
-No!
he says, jumping up from his desk,
-Watch!
He undoes his belt, he drops his trousers
he steps out of them –
He steps out one leg at a time.
BUT
Wallace Stevens, god bless him,
arranges his pants carefully on the floor of the
Hartford Accident
and
Indemnity Company
just so.
And grinning,
hops into both puddled legs
at the same time.
Then bends over and hoists the waistband
the belt dangling
in triumph.
Lesson learned.
Learned, schooled like
St. Ursule with her radishes
Just another lady
Just another confabulist
Just another story.

The painting in front of me, walled
eyed. Can’t figure you.  My cousin who
painted chose to demure.  Lidded obscure
behind your spec-
tacles.

She said - a lifetime ago - that the splotch of orange
peachy dreamed on the tips of your ears, the side of
your nose, the lip top, was sun in the studio
blasting through your flesh.  Simulacrum
blood and shine com-
bined.

flat knife
strokes elongate into rounds of skin
caress, provoke this con-
versation.

This arc of days smelling of colder dirt
Not coy, forth coming birth of frost.

Oy.

I took a knee to my right kidney and
kid you not –
thought
it should not
have come to this.  
My daughter had asked me
to be careful
to set my protest distant
on the periphery.
I recognized two neighbors
and three teachers
from our school.
Familiarity
made me oblivious
to distance
drew me to them.
I’ve always been fascinated by ahahs
when you look at a picture
and first it’s two vases
and then two faces.
Why didn’t I see that before?
Ah!  Hah! To learn
pain that sudden
makes my legs collapse.
No control.
To see my neighbor run.
Ah.
Hah.

Moved around a lot
-Cockle-jocked kid
plastic with newness
Trailers dusty
roses blousy with thorns and white
pecked leaves mottled.
Resist these yards’ allure
avoid the
crackers’ friendly waves
Pedal to the Haven
piles of fill, construction
reduced tombs of left over
concrete
bricks mounds of playtimes
trenches in which to ****
off.
Trenches in which
mosquito larvae swim
skeezle-legged and
willow branches are
whips
pieces of drywall
soaked grenades and
wooden
are the guns.  
Summer haircut flat nest of
stubble
face and scalp burnt.   Enough
pieces of bikes to Frankenstein
one fine ride.
From the top of the hill
mawed youth
rumbles down to barrel
roll crescendo’d
stops.  Let the
good
times.
Close out the day draw its
petty dread adrenalined
Panting cuz you are
late and he said
six.
Sectioned eight
pink stucco flakes and
sweetened lead.
Tatty shades
shriven.
He’s a tar cracked heel
small white dot
white
blink
blot
thinks about a
lot, these yards
landscapes drifted, curled with
feet to face, conserve his
heat.

A routine that hints at
outline
of endeavor:
The tea, the clothes
the washing
up.
The sit, the write
the sit some
more.
The stretch.

giant plans
little bit of

add extra time
commute
according to

giant plans
little bit of

new this hour
embrace
Monday through Sunday

giant plans
little bit of

isolated
thunderstorms
everything dries up

giant plans
little bit of

closer to the shore
afternoon hours
isolated

giant plans
little bit of

push into
planning to drive
chance of

giant plans
little bit of

head into the end
warming trend
dry out

return
imagine

your
voice

again