I was making dinner
Just the other night
My little girl, my all
My WORLD
Asked me,"Momma, am I ugly?"
I stopped,
Dead in my tracks
****, grilled onions and peppers
To hell with fried okra
Let them burn in butter
I say,"What on earth, would make you think such a thing?"
She,
My Stella, my all,
Replies," My friend, said I am ugly.
She said my scars are funny."
My heart, STOPPED
What does a mother say?
I was at a loss,
My face, drained of blood
Ugly?
My Stella?
She was sick,
At birth
Yes, she has her scars,
Yes, she's abnormally small
But I think,
She's the most beautiful
Of ALL,
I knelt,
Got on my knees
I looked in her beautiful,
Sky coloured eyes
And I said,
"Stella, you, are beautiful.
In all my life, never, have I seen a more beautiful little girl. Your scars, well, those are Gods love marks. Like lipstick kisses. And they make you special."

I was never a rose,
But green
Not a chrysanthemum,
Nor an orchid
Something cut,
Walked upon
And yet,
You were the dew
And kissed me,
With a thousand moist kisses
Everynight,
Making me sparkle
In the sunrise

BROTHER BLUEBOTTLE

A bluebottle emerges
from a hedge

like an expensive and
repulsive flying jewel.

It settles upon
my ring finger.

I wear it with
fear and delight.

Its iridescence
bewitches.

This, the first
bluebottle I'd ever seen.

I thought they grew
in hedges.

I had a lot to learn.

It buzzes about
in my brain

as if 50 years
had not passed.

Welcome back
brother bluebottle.

It's good to see you
still alive.

a refugee from Yale, and the stale stench
of old money, he took a job with the park service

where he maintained outhouses,
and got high in the cover of cottonwoods

this crap crew job gave him no
deferment from the draft, so he landed in Can Tho

he didn't clean outhouses there--little people did,
stirring his dreck in burning diesel for 75 cents a day

when his Huey was shot down in the
Mekong, only he and his door gunner survived

they hid, submerged in paddies until dark
hearing faint but ferocious voices of the VC

who never found them--and they made the
miracle mile back to base camp, covered in muck

that smelled like dung; a scent that stuck
with him in dreams, no matter how much he bathed

when he came home, he again labored
for the forest service, and asked for ******* duty

fearing if he lost the smell,
he would lose himself as well






.

bó na farraige*

ship at sea in fog
lowing like a giant metal
cow