South Florida
if you were a body part,
you’d be an armpit.

You’d be a bulged vein
on the side of a forehead
forever locked in a scowl
behind sunglasses.

You speak the language of horns
middle name, finger
blood type, combustible

You're a melting ***
that's boiled over the lid
sweating salt water at the brows
eyes red as the brake lights
in the maddening brightness,
you’re torrential daylight
heating nerves like greenhouse gasses
waiting for a reason to explode.

You’re a tropical motilov cocktail
no one can afford
2 parts anger, 1 part stupidity
full of yourself in a souvenir glass with a toothpick umbrella
You're all image

You’re all talk: the curse words
breaking out the mouths
of the angry line mob at Starbucks in the morning
You’re the indifferent silence
in the arena at the Heat games leaving early,
showing up late
due to the distance
from Brickell to Hialeah,
West Palm to Pompano
the gap between the entitled and the under-paid
a skyline of condos in a third world country
You’ve always been foreign to me.

You’re winterless, no chill
you attract only hurricanes
and tourists,
shoving anything that isn’t profitable
out of the way like post-storm debris
into the backyards of the Liberty City projects,
onto a landfill off the side of the Turnpike
Hide it beneath Bermuda grass,
line it with palm trees
if only conceal your cold blooded nature:
I see you.
You are overrun with iguanas,
blood-******* mosquitos
hot-headed New York drivers
not afraid to get hit

You get yours, Soflo
and you'll go as low
as the flat roofs of your duplexes
and the wages that can barely pay the rent to get it
latitude as attitude
temper as temperature
if you were a body part
I swear you’re an *******

south of the brain, one hour
in all directions,
I’d find you.
You’d impose your way
onto my flight to the Philippines,
to Seattle, to Raleigh
You’d follow me like excess baggage,
like gravity,
bringing me back when asked where I'm from:

That area north of Miami, I’d say
(the suburbs, but whatever, we are hard in our own way)
I'd show you off on their map
like some badge of grit,
certificate of aggression
I know how to break a sweat
walk brisk, drive evasive
ride storms in my sleep
I know you, I’d say,
“He’s a friend of mine.”
and I’d watch them light up
and remember
the postcards you've sent them
of the sunrise,
welcoming brown immigrants
onto white sand beaches
You were foreign to us
yet raised us as your own
in the furnace of your summers
iron on iron, the forger striking
softness into swords
built for survival
I'm made of you

my South Floridian temper
cools down
in your ocean breeze

if you were a body part,
you'd be a part of me
a socked foot in an And1 sandal
pressed to the gas pedal
as my drive takes me north
of your borders, far from home

I see you
in the rear view mirror,
tail-gating
like a sports car on the exit ramp
the color of the sun.

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot explain what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.

They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air --
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

I took the left path where hydrangeas grew and sleepy primroses under woods, edged shady trees.
The empty stream ran quietly dry
With grass cuttings piling high.
If one peeped, one would find tiny creatures
To cast a sparkle here and there, a delight.
So on tip-toe, with sandels bent
Up high I reached to take
The plastic fairy as she twirled a pirouette
In a theatre made by chance.
Reflected in a silver mirror intwinned with ivy branch
A mottled foal tends his dreams and Chrismas robin chirps.

My brother took the right hand path where the trees grew fruit
Ripe berries from the gooseberry bush bulged their prickles.
Dangling from hawthorn now a cowboy with a hat
Looking for his fellow Indian with the yellow back sack.
Sheep gather in a hollow, dark, protected from the sun
And Mr toad, now lost of paint, has turned a bit glum.

And so we leave our woodland friends and travel up the *****
Winding round the rose bed and goldfish where they float.
Then up we climb, the middle route, to jump the pruned clipped
Hedge.
The lawn divided in two halves, a contemporary taste.

Now we're nearly at that place where if one was to turn
Could see down across the land
To the sea and sand.
Of all the beauties that I've known
Nothing beats this Island home.

Love Mary x




My grandfather’s retirement bungalow was in Totland Isle of Wight.
It was named Innisfail meaning ‘Isle of Ireland’.
Behind, the garden led down to magical and delightful to children who came as visitors. My grandfather would prepare this woodland with some suitable surprises.
The garden and woodland deserved its own name and in retrospect
Is now named ‘Innislandia’ to suggest a separate, mysterious land.
Beyond the real world.
In the poem A Country Lane on page 8 the latched gate is the back gate to my grandparent’s garden and bungalow in Totland as above.

There’s no other choice but to wear them,
The drawer offered nothing but these.
An odd pair of socks might be quirky,
Odd sizes don’t normally please.

The one at my ankle was spotted,
The other was striped to the knee
The latter two sizes the smaller,
The former quite large by degree.

This mismatch I thought to keep secret
And cover the dissonant pair.
I chose from the wardrobe some trousers
And shoes, with considerable care.

My ruse would conceal the divergence
From prescribed social standards of dress
And none would be any the wiser
My discomfort I’d have to suppress.

Now, it’s harder to mask discomposure
When physical pain has attacked.
The small sock had cramped my toes tightly
That blood didn’t flow, was a fact.

My colleagues regarded me strangely
For they could see nothing amiss
But I could feel cold perspiration,
Anxiety I couldn’t dismiss.

It was then that I felt a strange itching,
The striped sock began to descend
And round my right ankle it wrinkled
And bulged at the trouser leg end.

Dismayed at my great consternation
But clueless to what was awry
My friends made comforting gestures
Need of which I could only deny.

The moral of this story’s transparent
Socks are always best worn as a pair
Their nature is in the relationship
Which provides a well-balanced air.

And take the trouble to remember
Be congruent in all that you do
For disparity will often bring discord
And that path, you’ll certainly rue.

Frau Doktor,
Mama Brundig,
take out your contacts,
remove your wig.
I write for you.
I entertain.
But frogs come out
of the sky like rain.

Frogs arrive
With an ugly fury.
You are my judge.
You are my jury.

My guilts are what
we catalogue.
I'll take a knife
and chop up frog.

Frog has not nerves.
Frog is as old as a cockroach.
Frog is my father's genitals.
Frog is a malformed doorknob.
Frog is a soft bag of green.

The moon will not have him.
The sun wants to shut off
like a light bulb.
At the sight of him
the stone washes itself in a tub.
The crow thinks he's an apple
and drops a worm in.
At the feel of frog
the touch-me-nots explode
like electric slugs.
Slime will have him.
Slime has made him a house.

Mr. Poison
is at my bed.
He wants my sausage.
He wants my bread.

Mama Brundig,
he wants my beer.
He wants my Christ
for a souvenir.

Frog has boil disease
and a bellyful of parasites.
He says: Kiss me. Kiss me.
And the ground soils itself.

Why
should a certain
quite adorable princess
be walking in her garden
at such a time
and toss her golden ball
up like a bubble
and drop it into the well?
It was ordained.
Just as the fates deal out
the plague with a tarot card.
Just as the Supreme Being drills
holes in our skulls to let
the Boston Symphony through.

But I digress.
A loss has taken place.
The ball has sunk like a cast-iron ***
into the bottom of the well.

Lost, she said,
my moon, my butter calf,
my yellow moth, my Hindu hare.
Obviously it was more than a ball.
***** such as these are not
for sale in Au Bon Marche.
I took the moon, she said,
between my teeth
and now it is gone
and I am lost forever.
A thief had robbed by day.

Suddenly the well grew
thick and boiling
and a frog appeared.
His eyes bulged like two peas
and his body was trussed into place.
Do not be afraid, Princess,
he said, I am not a vagabond,
a cattle farmer, a shepherd,
a doorkeeper, a postman
or a laborer.
I come to you as a tradesman.
I have something to sell.
Your ball, he said,
for just three things.
Let me eat from your plate.
Let me drink from your cup.
Let me sleep in your bed.
She thought, Old Waddler,
those three you will never do,
but she made the promises
with hopes for her ball once more.
He brought it up in his mouth
like a tricky old dog
and she ran back to the castle
leaving the frog quite alone.

That evening at dinner time
a knock was heard on the castle door
and a voice demanded:
King's youngest daughter,
let me in. You promised;
now open to me.
I have left the skunk cabbage
and the eels to live with you.
The kind then heard her promise
and forced her to comply.

The frog first sat on her lap.
He was as awful as an undertaker.
Next he was at her plate
looking over her bacon
and calves' liver.
We will eat in tandem,
he said gleefully.
Her fork trembled
as if a small machine
had entered her.
He sat upon the liver
and partook like a gourmet.
The princess choked
as if she were eating a puppy.
From her cup he drank.
It wasn't exactly hygienic.
From her cup she drank
as if it were Socrates' hemlock.

Next came the bed.
The silky royal bed.
Ah! The penultimate hour!
There was the pillow
with the princess breathing
and there was the sinuous frog
riding up and down beside her.
I have been lost in a river
of shut doors, he said,
and I have made my way over
the wet stones to live with you.
She woke up aghast.
I suffer for birds and fireflies
but not frogs, she said,
and threw him across the room.
Kaboom!

Like a genie coming out of a samovar,
a handsome prince arose in the
corner of her bedroom.
He had kind eyes and hands
and was a friend of sorrow.
Thus they were married.
After all he had compromised her.

He hired a night watchman
so that no one could enter the chamber
and he had the well
boarded over so that
never again would she lose her ball,
that moon, that Krishna hair,
that blind poppy, that innocent globe,
that madonna womb.

Isabel met an enormous bear,
Isabel, Isabel, didn't care;
The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,
The bear's big mouth was cruel and cavernous.
The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,
How do, Isabel, now I'll eat you!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry.
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,
Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.
Once in a night as black as pitch
Isabel met a wicked old witch.
the witch's face was cross and wrinkled,
The witch's gums with teeth were sprinkled.
**, **, Isabel! the old witch crowed,
I'll turn you into an ugly toad!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry,
She showed no rage and she showed no rancor,
But she turned the witch into milk and drank her.
Isabel met a hideous giant,
Isabel continued self reliant.
The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,
He had one eye in the middle of his forhead.
Good morning, Isabel, the giant said,
I'll grind your bones to make my bread.
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She nibled the zwieback that she always fed off,
And when it was gone, she cut the giant's head off.
Isabel met a troublesome doctor,
He punched and he poked till he really shocked her.
The doctor's talk was of coughs and chills
And the doctor's satchel bulged with pills.
The doctor said unto Isabel,
Swallow this, it will make you well.
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She took those pills from the pill concocter,
And Isabel calmly cured the doctor.

All summer I made friends
with the creatures nearby ---
they flowed through the fields
and under the tent walls,
or padded through the door,
grinning through their many teeth,  
looking for seeds,
suet, sugar; muttering and humming,
opening the breadbox, happiest when
there was milk and music. But once
in the night I heard a sound
outside the door, the canvas
bulged slightly ---something
was pressing inward at eye level.
I watched, trembling, sure I had heard
the click of claws, the smack of lips
outside my gauzy house ---
I imagined the red eyes,
the broad tongue, the enormous lap.
Would it be friendly too?
Fear defeated me. And yet,
not in faith and not in madness
but with the courage I thought
my dream deserved,
I stepped outside. It was gone.
Then I whirled at the sound of some
shambling tonnage.
Did I see a black haunch slipping
back through the trees? Did I see
the moonlight shining on it?
Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope ---
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?

so there on the window sill
i sat perpetrating my crime,
one had outside the window denoting the mentally ill
and the other inside the compartment of
a room denoting terrorists,
then i switched hands and opinions...
and then two bright objects of fire appeared
on the skyline... then another two... a perfect rhombus that
traversed the night sky.

i mingled *r.d. laing with the saint benaiah ben yehoiada today...
what a miracle of the slow approach,
i was so desperate for paper i even wrote on a sunday times news review page,
god help me, i feel the need to speak over people in writing.
testament to modern *******: the modern trans-gender phenomenon
is primarily found in st. thomas’ gospel
as entrée of r.d. laing’s **** of paradise artistic spontaneity
away from rigid theory so numerous in the exampled situation
of the lisp acquired on the psychoanalytic couch...
it speaks of turning left to right... up to down... man to woman...
a bit like a sat nav giving directions... you end up in a kingdom
that’s a ditch and the king is adorned not in crimson cardinal
or purple bishop... but pain... this is 1967... no wonder the hippies
died off after people started to dot dot dot post-1967
with the excavatio in translatio to remould western, christian, societies.
that text, says it all! david bowie and alice cooper and marc bolan
with the lipstick and 8 o’clock eye-socket shadows...
but things are picking up / getting serious...
the young ones are on it... post-colonial details i might have you add...
it was bound to happen... vietnam and the daddy longlegs starving man of africa...
built in processor 5.6GB of memory and an iphone...
what?! i’m translating my slavic soul... we fed the mongrels and mongolians
with crusader ***** in the baltic... we disappeared for a few centuries
and came back... blackmailing the airlines for an unsafe crash landing
somewhere in belarus, with the state banquet officiated, of course.
you see.. i’m the silent eager satyr from such paintings by matejko
like hołd pruski and stańczyk... expression beaming with: yes... go on...
spur me on... i’ll gallop to status of stallion with laughter!
all the catholic canonical saints are for people who prefer images
to words.
so there’s laing in 1967 allowed the ancient deciphering of
quasi-egyptian text... and then all hell breaks loose in the now, present...
i’ve got two left hands and two right feet... i think i’ll transverse
in walking like a crab... sidewise... out of here...
you go along with your daily “historical” bullying...
i like my place... outside the post-colonial continuum...
so much so that i even have a theory for the experience:
HE WASN’T THINKING IN HIS MOTHER TONGUE,
THE NATIVITY OF THE SOUL TOOK FORM FROM THE POLLEN
OF THE BODY, MANY IRANIANS AND EGYPTIANS...
HE THOUGHT COLONIAL, HE ACTED COLONIAL...
PREVIOUSLY HE MENTIONED POLAND LENDING AEROPLANES
TO EGYPT... HE ACTED LIKE AN ENGLISHMAN TO A ******...
NOW I SEE HIM LIKE A PENGUIN WITH CHEETAH FUR...
A WORD OF LISP I GATHER...
I WAS THINKING STUPID TRUST... WHILE
A SINGLE WORD OF THE MOTHERTONGUE RESONATED
TO PURSUE CREATIVITY THUS EXPRESSED
UNABLE TO FIND THE 0,0 COORDINATE IN THE
NORTHERN TRANS-EUROPEAN MILITARY COMPLEX.
this is how integration happens in europe: acquire the native tongue
acquire native psychology... don’t acquire the latter
define the former with exactness of body...
conclusion? i did stupid via trust... he did stupid via a blood-thirst
and a michael jackson trick of bleaching the soul
but leaving the body oddly mongrel-like... not so complete
like africans from the caribbean losing the tongue
due to jamaica’s great weather, then moving to england
and starting reggae rap... god knows how those two fitted for a size 12
perfect matching: quick-slow, quick-slow...
slow-quick rat ah rat ah regina duck in dumplings... bewildering
that i didn’t turn grey but turned ginger over the years.
you see this theory? it makes the mongol horse pale in comparison;
dad said: a jew did it! a jew did it! a ******* mid-******* just said: you
(double emphasis, the colon and italics... well i was there,
and this poem is proof that i was there, with her).
then this poem in the background with added photogenic approach...
titled: on ******* who create art.
ahem... napkin for the torero and rare steak to suite:
there they are the geniuses and the mediocre,
sitting in abodes of aspirational peace of the living -
half-dead many of them almost to the core of rotten apples,
with arsenic in apple seeds the last remaining life -
a poisonous mechanisation of activity on the breeding continuum
curtailed (is that implying cut-short?),
horrible ******* to live with,
they sitting knitting words together that make no cardigan fit,
or they’re making 2d rooms with the odd splash of colour
that will never obey the cube but the rectangular canvas,
no use of a poet’s pen in the solace of a quiet pension spaced,
the usurpers of peace among the living among the twins of sabbath,
these ronin of the fountain of solace found in t.v. and slippers...
who let them in?! can you hear poetry with a hammer?
can you hear it on a construction site, or an art gallery or a library?
so there they are, the *******, choosing the most importune of places
to do their craft... in the living spaces of plumbers and electricians...
hardly the place to craft their art when there’s no pulpit to
exercise their crafty practice with the end remark.
why then the plumber the safeguard and incubator nest of home,
and why the cold chill of aqueduct syringe at home for poet?
does no friendliness reside in stressing or not stressing certain words anymore?
perhaps the coalminers will tell me?
they say i am in a coal-mine by the sheer whiteness of disposable white
of canvas... and only among them in solidarity of a brotherhood
by excavating with them the coal that’s their amber burnt at home
and my solitary ink expressed in the library of their darkness of having
bulged forearm forceps of the bicep and no patience for reading... but digging,
i’ll know my orientation in those mines once more...
where the safe and understood route has has not yet been written...
and all that is seen... is the whitened darkness of the blank canvas of
what i peer into stumbling with the inverse... the flashlight of words
against the darkness of the canvas... me and my blind horse.
god i hate live editing... but then again... it keeps me
drunk and soberly paranoid to scrabble in revisions before i doze till morn.

Under the blanket
Of the cloak of night
I tended my garden
I reached for the seeds of the stars of night
And drew them down to Earth
To relish them forever
Sweet fruits, apples, and pomegranates
And rose buds in bloom
Permeated the air like sweet incense
I fed myself of the beautiful trees
Which grew too numerous to count
But nightmares arose from deep within
When I slumbered beneath the tree
I dreamt of falling
Fleeing to the ocean's depths
My bones were brittle
And my face was covered
In filth and stench
From roving in the desert
My hair was matted
And my eyes bulged from their sockets
My tears were running dry
I did not deserve this torment

~

So I sank and saught the truth

~

The bottoms were pleasantly beautiful
I befriended monsters there
And remember the seaweed
Toying with my hair
In time, I arose as Mother of the Sea,
As Venus
Yet another garden was claimed by me
And I harkened to their call
To come to know
This destiny of mine

~

I swelled in the gardens of others
Until I needed to return
When the student is ready
Their teacher appears
And I am a willing student of life!

~

That's when I saw him from afar
And my world would change forever
I peeked at him through the willows
He was shining iridescence itself
I've met others like him before
If I knew what was in store
Would I still approach?
Knowing me, probably!
He whispered that I was a wanted woman
He's the first that saw my soul as true
Everyone else misunderstood
Or feared my intentions
Towards them
While I hungered for fruits
I could never receive again

~

I am barred from the land by the river
Why would He do this to me?
The Universe's eyes aren't shut
And have 20/20 vision
His servant always maintained sure distance
From his most prized possession

~

He gave me his cloak
A garment of protection
The dark night
And elevated me thusly
I took on another form
As beautiful as any
I vowed not to harm his Master's garden
~

So I tended mine
With stars of night
And rain and snow
With bountiful deer and squirrels
If I knew the curses thrown
Would I have stayed in the sea
If I knew that ruling the skies of night
Would bring this upon me
I would still stay where I am today
I how this seventy tomes seven

~

My garden bears fruit gloriously
But I long to bring honor
To my garden
By making his mandrakes
My own

~

All hail to these
Three times three

~

The first pear I tasted
The first apple that fell
The first time I glowed
And knew the Never - Uttered

~
... the longing to be like Him! ...
.... the pang to be His mandrake!....
          The love we once shared
Please, God
Give me one more
Bite!
~
Lord, what have I done?
He raised me up
And I dragged him down
Now we must spend eternity this way
In foxholes and carcasses
Always dying to relive the recent past
When morning glories were my favorite flower

~

... he shielded me
And I was cast away from the Garden
And it's fruits forever
I wander the desert once again
But this time
I am not alone

~

We roamed...
He offered me a desert flower
And bade me to plant
From it sprang a river stream  
To sustain our coagulating blood
It did not satisfy
We fell
And in each other's eyes we found the key
To drown out exile' s realities
I saw the sun's rays in his eyes again
The dark nights will not be gloomy anymore
The Name of God is no longer a four letter word
We fell down
Again and again
And the more we fell
The more, before our eyes
This garden
Our garden
Grew

~

We tended our garden
Until then

~

Contemplating on Jehovah
Grieves my heart
Until it rips open and I spill my blood
The animals retreat
My plants for
Because my blood has been spilled
Innocent blood
Within my own garden
My lover has left
My night lamp
To become the hunt
And perish
For the unspoken
Uncherishef
.  The defiled .

We will never share our garden
Again evermore

THE FERRIS WHEEL

I’ve always trusted machines, especially big ones. Like the ones at the annual county fair held at the Oklahoma City fairgrounds. After 2 weeks, the closing ceremony was always held in the main bull riding arena with a captivating routine performed by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Even their dead horse was on display throughout the whole time of the fair. His name was Trigger and he was stuffed. Roy Rogers was so in love with Trigger that he couldn’t go on without him. So he had him stuffed and carted him around whatever circuit they might be on. It was a sad but interesting display. But now he had a new Trigger and new tricks which were somewhat entertaining.

In the fall of 1971, upon this particular day Matt, a friend of mine and I convinced my little brother Wayne to go on the biggest ride at the fair, the double Ferris wheel.  It was a Ferris wheel shaped like an 8. The two wheels were loaded one after the other. As the seats were filled the ride would continue going up, up, and up then reaching the apex of two circles, sitting in a little grated seat, held in by a bar that locked you in at the at the beginning of the ride. When you reached the top it felt like you were riding a cloud. Going over the top of the Ferris wheel was an unimaginable thrill, it was built to guarantee a belief that you would in no way survive. Then you would swing back and forth, waiting for the other circle of seats to be filled before the real ride began.

As Matt and I got into our seat, Wayne hopped in next to me. We heard the clangs of the operator shutting the bars over the riders locking them into place. But when we got to the operator, the familiar clang was more like a clunk. The bar had not latched. We were not locked in. Now in the back of my head I took this in, but I chose to ignore it. We went up a little higher as other patrons were clanged tightly into their seats. Then as we went up, people started getting bold, swinging their legs, rocking their seats like a swing chair. After moving up about 80 feet, Matt began to swing ours. ”This is cool, huh” he said, trying to hide any little creep of fear. “Yeah, this is really great”, I agreed. But I didn’t do anything to cause the seat to rock anymore than it already was. Wayne was silent, his eyes clenched shut.

All of a sudden, the whole apparatus raised us up into the atmosphere. I swear we were at least as high as the tallest building in the Oklahoma City skyline. I could tell Matt was truly scared and he had quit rocking the chair. That didn’t matter. One last jolt threw us over the top and the “safety” bar swung wide open, out and away before coming back slowly to rest on our laps providing no safety whatsoever. After the bar swung out a couple of more times I was convinced we were going to fall to our deaths and become county fair legends. All three of us clung to the grated back of the seat, our fingers drained of blood by holding on so tight. We came down three times past the operator of the Ferris wheel before we got his attention. But Wayne was clutched so tightly to the back of the seat; you couldn’t have separated him with a paint scraper. He would have died there had we finally not gotten the attention of the operator and the operator’s boss.

It was becoming apparent that something was dreadfully wrong, so the ride slowly and painfully came to a stop. Passengers at the top were swinging their seats unaware of our impending death. Finally the double wheel cranked our seat to the exit platform. We couldn’t speak. The breath was out of us. Yelling at this time was impossible. Everyone remembered Wayne. He was white as a ghost and his lips were blue. He had clutched so hard to the back of the seat the whole side of his face was imprinted with the grate. I found this very curious. There was a pattern similar to a waffle imprinted from his forehead to his chin. He was still white but the lines in the imprint were deep red. His eyes remained closed until I was able to convince him that the ground was 2 feet below him. Finally he let go, and all three of us were pried from the seat. The ground never felt as good as it did that day.

We were still crying and shaking when the Manager of the fairgrounds arrived and removed us to the calming area which also doubled as the baby animal petting zoo.  We sat down in the petting area allowing the straw to dry our pants as all three of us had literally peed in them. As our pants became drier, we became a little calmer and we began petting baby lambs and chicks.   Then I looked across the way at the oddities booth. I had been in there that day. They had all sorts of gross weird things in there. I was fascinated. Some of the exhibits were pickled and some were still living.  I saw 2-headed babies in pickle jars and a calf with a leg sticking out of its forehead. I didn’t even want to think about that now. Too late. I bent over and puked so hard my eyes bulged.

If, entrusted were I, with a magical purse,
one that held what was needed, but not monies curse.
One that neither bulged, nor would ever be empty,
so when I reached down within, there I'd find plenty.

A handful of tolerance, I would pull each day,
to pass out to those in need, I met along the way.
I would take a fist full of hope, to toss aloft.
Scatter it among the throng, letting it land soft.

I would enter into the turf of gangs and their wars.
Trading peace for their guns, so they would **** no more.
I would go to Washington, there I would invest,
two handfuls of honesty, perhaps ten, would be best.

Charity, I would share, with those who live large.
Help them to give some away, so no one need starve.
I could change so many things and alter many lives.
But, I could also do harm and make so many cry.

As it is so easy, to think one self's above,
to take control of lives, forgetting about love.
So for myself, I'd take a bit to keep myself humble.
So that I and my purse, never, ever stumble

didn't shower
sitting in the cubicle
for long hours
didn't shower
and blood
is still on hands
and feet are still riddled
with dirt
staining cheap
carpet floorprint
afraid to touch
anything
coworkers peer
over
their fabric palisades
eyes burning holes
through ripped shirt
and crooked tie
head down
don't exist
no one has to
know a thing

didn't shower
hair is manged and
disoriented
I can feel blood
drip off fingertips
pat - pat - pat
on bland slate
carpet design
can't concentrate
didn't shower
everyone stares
black eye
swollen and scabbed
everyone knows
have to
it's all puddling at feet
washing with the dirt
look away

******* look away!

head is severed
on the mahogany finish desk
black eye bulged
black and purple tennis ball
everyone gathers
whispers whispers
jaw opens
teeth fall out
pat - pat - pat
no one says anything
look away look away
look away
get up to leave
the head stays there
dark souvenir

quick drive
home
shower
hours melt away
infirmities recede
sink back below skin
didn't shower
everyone knew
what happened
last night
but now
no evidence
no witnesses
no one knows
the perfect crime
a cruel smile
emerges on
bare white teeth
as night sets in once again

We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell
Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime,
Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour,
And choked the steps too thick with clay to climb.
What murk of air remained stank old, and sour
With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men
Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,
If not their corpses...


                                    There we herded from the blast
Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last,
Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles,
And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping
And sploshing in the flood, deluging muck -
The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles
Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.
We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined
'O sir, my eyes - I'm blind, - I'm blind, I'm blind!'
Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids
And said if he could see the least blurred light
He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.
'I can't' he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids',
Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there
In posting Next for duty, and sending a scout
To beg a stretcher somewhere, and flound'ring about
To other posts under the shrieking air.


                                               *
Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
And one who would have drowned himself for good, -
I try not to remember these things now.
Let dread hark back for one word only: how
Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,
And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,
Renewed most horribly whenever crumps
Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath, -
Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout
'I see your lights!' But ours had long died out.

Gods, what a black, fierce day! The clouds were iron,
Wrenched to strange, rugged shapes; the red sun winked
Over the rough crest of the hairy wood
In angry scorn; the grey road twisted, kinked,
Like a sick serpent, seeming to environ
The trees with magic. All the wood was still --

Cracked, crannied pines bent like malicious cripples
Before the gusty wind; they seemed to nose,
Nudge, poke each other, cackling with ill mirth --
Enchantment's days were over -- sh! -- Suppose
That crouching log there, where the white light stipples
Should -- break its quiet! WAS THAT CRIMSON -- EARTH?

It smirched the ground like a lewd whisper, "Danger!" --
I hunched my cloak about me -- then, appalled,
Turned ice and fire by turns -- for -- someone stirred
The brown, dry needles sharply! Terror crawled
Along my spine, as forth there stepped -- a Stranger!
And all the pines crooned like a drowsy bird!

His stock was black. His great shoe-buckles glistened.
His fur cuffs ended in a sheen of rings.
And underneath his coat a case bulged blackly --
He swept his ****** in a rush of wings!
Then took the fiddle out, and, as I listened,
Tightened and tuned the yellowed strings, hung slackly.

Ping! Pang! The clear notes swooped and curved and darted,
Rising like gulls. Then, with a finger skinny,
He rubbed the bow with rosin, said, "Your pardon
Signor! -- Maestro Nicolo Paganini
They used to call me! Tchk! -- The cold grips *******
A poor musician's fingers!" -- His lips parted.

A tortured soul screamed suddenly and loud,
From the brown, quivering case! Then, faster, faster,
Dancing in flame-like whorls, wild, beating, screaming,
The music wailed unutterable disaster;
Heartbroken murmurs from pale lips once proud,
Dead, choking moans from hearts once nobly dreaming.

Till all resolved in anguish -- died away
Upon one minor chord, and was resumed
In anguish; fell again to a low cry,
Then rose triumphant where the white fires fumed,
Terrible, marching, trampling, reeling, gay,
Hurling mad, broken legions down to die

Through everlasting hells -- The tears were salt
Upon my fingers -- Then, I saw, behind
The fury of the player, all the trees
Crouched like violinists, boughs crooked, jerking, blind,
Sweeping mad bows to music without fault,
Grey cheeks to greyer fiddles, withered knees.

Gasping, I fled! -- but still that devilish tune
Stunned ears and brain alike -- till clouds of dust
Blotted the picture, and the noise grew dim --
Shaking, I reached the town -- and turned -- in trust --
Wind-smitten, dread, against the sky-line's rim,
Black, dragon branches whipped below a moon!

Your magnificent masterpiece leaned to the left.
Framed and fixed, we never noticed until we stepped away.
You bulged blue, swore saffron and screamed at the help-
As if it were their faulted frame leaning lopsided!
I think I said something, maybe made mock;
My taunting tongue always for an attack on you...
So we both swore saffron, but only you bulged blue.

Frau Doktor,
Mama Brundig,
take out your contacts,
remove your wig.
I write for you.
I entertain.
But frogs come out
of the sky like rain.

Frogs arrive
With an ugly fury.
You are my judge.
You are my jury.

My guilts are what
we catalogue.
I’ll take a knife
and chop up frog.

Frog has not nerves.
Frog is as old as a cockroach.
Frog is my father’s genitals.
Frog is a malformed doorknob.
Frog is a soft bag of green.

The moon will not have him.
The sun wants to shut off
like a light bulb.
At the sight of him
the stone washes itself in a tub.
The crow thinks he’s an apple
and drops a worm in.
At the feel of frog
the touch-me-nots explode
like electric slugs.
Slime will have him.
Slime has made him a house.

Mr. Poison
is at my bed.
He wants my sausage.
He wants my bread.

Mama Brundig,
he wants my beer.
He wants my Christ
for a souvenir.

Frog has boil disease
and a bellyful of parasites.
He says: Kiss me. Kiss me.
And the ground soils itself.

Why
should a certain
quite adorable princess
be walking in her garden
at such a time
and toss her golden ball
up like a bubble
and drop it into the well?
It was ordained.
Just as the fates deal out
the plague with a tarot card.
Just as the Supreme Being drills
holes in our skulls to let
the Boston Symphony through.

But I digress.
A loss has taken place.
The ball has sunk like a cast-iron ***
into the bottom of the well.

Lost, she said,
my moon, my butter calf,
my yellow moth, my Hindu hare.
Obviously it was more than a ball.
***** such as these are not
for sale in Au Bon Marché.
I took the moon, she said,
between my teeth
and now it is gone
and I am lost forever.
A thief had robbed by day.

Suddenly the well grew
thick and boiling
and a frog appeared.
His eyes bulged like two peas
and his body was trussed into place.
Do not be afraid, Princess,
he said, I am not a vagabond,
a cattle farmer, a shepherd,
a doorkeeper, a postman
or a laborer.
I come to you as a tradesman.
I have something to sell.
Your ball, he said,
for just three things.
Let me eat from your plate.
Let me drink from your cup.
Let me sleep in your bed.
She thought, Old Waddler,
those three you will never do,
but she made the promises
with hopes for her ball once more.
He brought it up in his mouth
like a tricky old dog
and she ran back to the castle
leaving the frog quite alone.

That evening at dinner time
a knock was heard on the castle door
and a voice demanded:
King’s youngest daughter,
let me in. You promised;
now open to me.
I have left the skunk cabbage
and the eels to live with you.
The kind then heard her promise
and forced her to comply.

The frog first sat on her lap.
He was as awful as an undertaker.
Next he was at her plate
looking over her bacon
and calves’ liver.
We will eat in tandem,
he said gleefully.
Her fork trembled
as if a small machine
had entered her.
He sat upon the liver
and partook like a gourmet.
The princess choked
as if she were eating a puppy.
From her cup he drank.
It wasn’t exactly hygienic.
From her cup she drank
as if it were Socrates’ hemlock.

Next came the bed.
The silky royal bed.
Ah! The penultimate hour!
There was the pillow
with the princess breathing
and there was the sinuous frog
riding up and down beside her.
I have been lost in a river
of shut doors, he said,
and I have made my way over
the wet stones to live with you.
She woke up aghast.
I suffer for birds and fireflies
but not frogs, she said,
and threw him across the room.
Kaboom!

Like a genie coming out of a samovar,
a handsome prince arose in the
corner of her bedroom.
He had kind eyes and hands
and was a friend of sorrow.
Thus they were married.
After all he had compromised her.

He hired a night watchman
so that no one could enter the chamber
and he had the well
boarded over so that
never again would she lose her ball,
that moon, that Krishna hair,
that blind poppy, that innocent globe,
that madonna womb.

You were made in March when the groundhogs sensed shadows
and the wine chilled itself in its glassy embrace
I was on whisky, watching late nights, and oh
The wires crossed and we did too near the fireplace

Winter shut the windows with its icy blast
and my rhythm quickened at Scene 4
where the door opened and the lady emerged
in a birthday suit and settled on the floor.

The cat scan showed your wiggly bits in May
and Momma smiled  about the vortex of the man I made
growing plump and rich in a warmer climate inside
For nine long months the case of scotch disappeared

as you grew stronger and bulged out beautifully.
You were born in December when the  lights went on
and Momma cuddled you chillfully!
In Jan you went to Nan. My impulses returned.

Feb came around rather quickly. A year gone
and a son born unblamed of the winter chill
or lusting whisky and late nights surging
outside/ inside wherever. I didn't name you
Jack Frost Junior for nothing.
There's a story behind every name, son!

Author Notes
Ha ha Ha.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

She was the face of the century.
We'd all believed the age of heroes was past
but she was the real thing -
brilliant, brave beyond belief and wise,
and the planet - the whole planet -
was proud to have her as ambassador.

And when the broadcast arrived,
proof that we had spanned the solar system
and set foot on another planet,
every Earthling eye gazed, every ear strained,
so as not to miss a word.

"..."

Martian sky.  Red dust.  Second transmission.

"...
"I know...
"I know you are watching me.
"I know that this is the moment,
"the moment you have waited for.
"Seven months ago I left you.  It's hard
"to hold your breath for seven months!"

Across the globe, people laughed and gasped.

"Seven months."

A pause.

"Seven months, and enough money
"To end poverty
"across most of the Earth."

Heads were scratched.
Where was this going?

"Well, everyone, here I am.
"I can see you, you know.  A star,
"A dot in the black - that's you.
"And that dot -
"Oh, that precious, beautiful dot!"

Eyes moistened.  Friends embraced.

"Where every speck of dust is a home
"for something.
"Where even the forgotten scrapings
"Of last week's dinner
"plays host to LIFE!
"Air to breathe!
"Water to drink!
"So many, many things to love!"

Thirty two seconds of silence.

"Why did you send me here?"

Fifty three seconds of silence.

"This is hell."

And with that
she placed the camera on a tripod
stood before it
and removed her helmet.

The once fierce eyes
quickly bulged and reddened
skin puckered and peeled,
frost scorched and suffocated
lips, best known for forming momentous words
turned first blue then purple
and blood flowed freely
from her nostrils.
She slumped, fell,
knocked over the camera.

End of transmission.

The whole broadcast had lasted just seven minutes.

She was already dead by the time we heard the first word.

~ the director

one woman in particular became trapped in a man’s body and he married her.  a child they tried not to have soon arrived and brought with it a list of demands from the others.

his peers double crossed each other in small houses.  he himself was able to get away with punching a young girl for the right to drag a sled.  his child began to accept talking toys in exchange for keeping quiet.  

he was in love with his sister, always had been.  after she was mauled by the dogs meant for his father, he made walking his home until it called itself a hotel

of running.  last year, he caught a movie one had made of his life and though he missed the dedication

he did not miss
the death row scene, the saw his brother took from the cake, the plain basket
as it moved
with his mother

from bike
to bike…  

~ transmissible

the stomach remains dumb

the way she finds this out on a school bus

the way her mother
after losing
a child  

~ ephemeron

cornfield visionaries, they sat around the ball as if it were fire.  I myself was tired of magic

so we played four short and the ball was a fact.  a hard period planted in mud

or a long quote
buzzing the ears
together.  

~ alleviant

of all places a park bench will do for the man not yet reading but planning to the children’s book with its cover of mother and child and kitchen and some kind of batter on the child’s face.  presently the man is alone much as his mother is alone in one of his fingers.  two men nearby are drinking from a water fountain and in turn are each palming the low **** for the other.  they are friends but only by length of service and the man can tell one is aggressive and the other allows it.  the book itself is disappointing.  the child is just ***** and the mother is just angry and they learn only to be themselves.  the men at the fountain become two men on a bench and the reader scoots over to hear about the voice of god as ****** children take the park.

~ amends

your house in foreclosure and you leave it and you are holding two bags of cat food.
  
sometimes a tricycle is a particular tricycle
trying to clear
with its back wheel
the low cinema
of your bare
foot.  

I am mugged in your dream and mugged in mine and mugged by a woman in both.

I hope we can meet without talking money.  this story my mother gave me
about the world’s first invisible man
is a keeper.  he was born

that way.

your mother I saw her setting the patio table for two and I looked away but could hear
no one
beating her.

we can talk about your cat.    

~ homology

the empty raccoons by their emptiness have kept the priest awake.  the church dumpsters wheel themselves into the world and he watches.  he tells his mother it is the silence of god.  she shrinks from him more and more and eventually fits through a door he cannot see.  his house fills with garbage and he becomes convinced he is wearing gloves.  we do not argue.  he raises them with his hands to take them off with his teeth.      

~ fiction

my age, father paints an abstract jesus.  mother has the kitchen to herself and sits.  mother watches my brother lift a chair and leave.  my sister lets a train pass and bites at the shoulder strap of her bra.  not my age, I draw a violinist.  draw a dog at the neck of its owner.  at my age of apple and rope, I prefer god’s early work.

~ monodist

online, I pretended to be writing a very long obituary.  in house, I dreamt not of my wife but of a grape being rolled by a palm gently toward a grape the dream could not see.  as it is in heaven, I was not all there.

~ signage

I was limping the edge of the pond so as to confirm in the world my clearance given to me as before by frogs.  my punched nose was warm and my grief melted from it and I cupped my hands together for the blood and what mixed with it and when the cup was full I halved it and my already thick shoelaces thickened.  soon into this drama one frog jumped from the pond and I startled that indeed it was no frog but a toad or some form of toad.  I followed it woozily from my father’s land onto the land of the man who’d fathered the boy whose fist had found so recently fistfight heaven.  the toad was dull save for its hop from water and save for its courage and save for a sickly orange spot on its back that was a star when the toad paused and a mangled star otherwise.  everything had been planned and my body wanted to be generous to the toad and it was hard not to run or use my hands or ruin this paradise that I knew then as vengeance but now see as existential plagiarism which is nonetheless vengeance.  I told myself I would not rub the toad over me and I had to convince myself repeatedly.  the boy was no doubt inside the house as his dog was not to be seen but his sister was sprawled on two towels as she was very tall and her sunglasses were cocked enough so that her right eye could see mine.  the toad was in her mouth immediately and then her throat bulged but went quickly back to its original.  I lost the toad forever then but its orange star surfaced on the right and then the left of her belly button.  I told her I would see her at school and I would but this was the last time I would see her in anything but an overcoat and that boy would try and come close but never again pin me down.      

~ discipline

somehow sweet in his want of no trouble, the unwashed man goes hand in hand with your father to the backyard where they wrestle as if hurt were people keeping them apart.  your father’s jaw comes loose, the man’s ear seems held by too small a magnet.  at window you a sickly child with overbite and a scarecrow’s pipe stroke the puppet-corn hair of a sister’s doll and walk it cloud to defrosted cloud.  amidst this bartering of vanished weight your mother is being made to balance on her bare stomach a glass of lemonade.  in three days the man will come back, your father a bit healed, your mother less angry about straws.

~ the rabbits

the head of a shovel enters the earth of this southern field.  there is no more give here than in the northern.  the burying boy has been long facing the wind and will be longer.  in walking toward the boy, the old man’s knees have locked.  the old man is seen by the boy and the old man waves upright in the wind’s gnaw.  the tops of the boy’s legs reach his stomach.  

~ archaism

a man carrying his dog stops to kneel.  for my distance from him, I am disallowed any inquiry that would flower.  he sets the black dog in front of him in the manner I have imagined god at the simple chore of placing those first shadows.  I am holding my son nostalgically, almost forgetting how my tooth would ache and his tooth would ache and both would be things I knew and he didn’t.

~ sincerely

the males had in them a sloth and a jolly fog of sportsmanship

and in the females a mistake was made.

against frogs, and against the dim leaping
of frogsong

I had this friend

broke his arm
while *******  
at the wheel.  

I put my arm in the grief of my arm.

pink scars
peppered her lithe limbs
flower petals incised
on peach skin

moss coursed
withered yellow-brick channels
sloping loosely down
the crooked river mouth

clouds bulged
glazed heavily over the sun
like a flashlight
engulfed in sheets

lightning sliced
the pane of sky splintered
air ignited instantly
and danced around us

daddy screams and shouts, eyes burning with rage
mummy cries tears bitter with sage
brother is scared, eyes wide as moons
we all agree daddy has gone through menopause too soon

on our faces, we brush aside this sudden burst
"it's just nothing," we say, "he knows family comes first."
but the sight of him consumed is etched in the air
trapping the three of us in trauma's snare --

his eyes were livid, veins bulged from his neck
pulsing with the viscosity of a lava lake
he burned like blue fire, the kind that burns too hot
destroying everything around it, leaving death-clogged smog

i don't know why daddy is so angry today
till then, in our room, mummy brother and i will stay
i have never seen daddy so angered and flared
so distant with fury, so paralysingly mad

i fear for this family, i never have before this
this fear scares me, so i will make a list
i hope it will serve to place some of my fears
into linear thoughts, before it rains tears

first, daddy has always been holy and kind,
on his chest a cross, you would always find
but as he grows older, with hair turning grey,
with valley-deep wrinkles and memories gone astray,

he seems to forget, that i am human too
with his words, he beats me, beats me black and blue
criticisms and 'bad bad bad' ring through the house
if only he saw, he is the wolf that prowls

second, daddy had been a family man
the kind that spends a fortune flying us over land
but lately, he's just been out of touch and sight
sins queuing outside the door, waiting to enter at night

he seems to forget when i was a child
the cards i gave him, the way i made him smile
but i remember, when his hair was still black
in our family, love and warmth was never in lack

time, stop. return my daddy back to me.
stop this affair, i beg you; don't let age run free.
don't run through your fingers in his hair like that.
don't paint his hair grey, don't make it fall away.

give me the daddy my mummy met, back.

I used to like you, a lot.
My heart soared when you called my phone
My eyes bulged when you texted me five years later
And you called me gorgeous
Something I’ve heard so many times but it only mattered when
You said it
To me
And I thought that those feelings were gone
And I suddenly can’t tell if it’s because you’re back or if they never went away
I’m missing you
But at the same time I’ve forgotten everything we did
It’s like I pushed it to the back of mind
And somehow it got lost
And it’s come all back to haunt me
My brain hurts
With those feelings
From 2013
Because the feelings I have for you now
In 2017
Don’t feel the same
So should I even try?
Where’s your head?
Why can’t you focus?
Why can’t you decide?
Why won’t you just understand
That he’s not it
And you’re better off alone
He’s just a reminder of everything
You could never be
Someone’s lover
Someone’s everything

Let us fumble, scratch,
slash, claw
through endless Autumn fields

cut from hushed velvet,
hushed velvet and husks.

You say at night
my voice rounds, softens,
grows heavy.

Breeze rustles twigs,
lulls, a lullaby floats over
from the farmhouse.

Fields fill with dust,
bone homes, crackling
with seed ticks and mice.

I think of fruit, the toil
of warm flesh, how it bulged,
slumped off and rotted.

You ask how I could have forgotten
harvest, entered the slumber,
reaped nothing?

The Moon blooms, ripens the sky.

I stop, squat,
trace circles in the sand.

This year I just don't  have the heart.


                                                                -kevin mann

Three months old in my mother’s womb
Whispers I heard outside,
A man persuading mum
To destroy me
Because he doubted I was his.
I heard mum cried,
And felt her tears
Falling to her bulging belly,
My bed room,
A thunderous sound
That struck my universe
Almost tearing it apart.


The man talking to another man,
A professional killer of my kind,
I heard about the price of my life,
To destroy me
Worth only ‘$300’.
Mum’s heart beat faster,
Bringing blood like a mighty rushing wave
To my weak, gentle nerves and veins
Almost rapturing them apart.

Mum whispered
I heard while she cried,
“You are a gift and blessing to me,
My child, my beloved one.”
I will keep you,” She promised.
I tried to comfort mum but couldn't.
I conjured up ominous images
Of my shattered body,
My flesh, blood and bone;
It was too painful to bear.
So I stamped my feet
On my bed,
Her stomach bulged,
And I felt mum embraced me,
With her gentle hands.

From the smallest corner of her heart
Next to her bulging belly,
My bed room,
I heard mama interceded with God
For the forgiveness of the sins
And comfort of thousand women
Who aborted their pregnancies
Due to ****, pregnant while breast feeding,
Incestuous affairs, teenage pregnancies
Or on medical conditions
For the physical and emotional pains
They endured and guilt that may have lingered still.

In her bulging stomach,
My bed room, my home,
I waited for my eviction,
Every day.
Then one day, after a long wait,
It rained cats and dogs
With muds of blood
In my bedroom.
I tried to cling to the roof of my bed room,
But was swept away by the natural disaster
Through the channel of life
Into my mother's gentle arms.

I was limping the edge of the pond so as to confirm in the world my clearance given to me as before by frogs. my punched nose was warm and my grief melted from it and I cupped my hands together for the blood and what mixed with it and when the cup was full I halved it and my already thick shoelaces thickened. soon into this drama one frog jumped from the pond and I was startled. startled too that indeed it was no frog but a toad or some form of toad. I followed it woozily from my father’s land onto the land of my enemy. the toad was dull save for its hop from water and save for its courage and save for a sickly orange spot on its back that was a star when the toad paused and a mangled star otherwise. a couple times I lost the toad, the land was new, but I knew to stop and the toad knew to rustle or in my more desperate moments to come wholly back. everything had been planned and my body wanted to be generous to the toad and it was hard not to run or use my hands or ruin this paradise that I knew then as vengeance but now as existential plagiarism which is nonetheless vengeance. I would not rub the toad over me and I had to convince myself repeatedly. the boy was no doubt inside the house as his dog was not to be seen but his sister was sprawled on two towels put short end to short end as she was very tall and her sunglasses were cocked enough so that her right eye could see mine. the toad was in her mouth immediately and then her throat bulged but was back to its original in no time. I lost the toad forever then but its orange star surfaced on the right and then the left of her belly button. I told her I would see her at school and I would but this was the last time I would see her in anything but an overcoat and the boy would try and come close but never again pin me down.

Late in the year and in the night,
A ghostly giant came into sight,
It slowly trailed and bulged the ancient causeway,
Intent on hiding out of harms way.

A magnificent beast from the age of sale,
Came into port to shelter from the winter storms and gales,
It groans and creaks from 50 sheets and rattles,
Like a wounded whale with its brass decor and iron chattels.

The body built of wood and steel,
With copper wrapped around it's keel,
To guard its cargo of rarest spice, silks and precious metals,
It puffed and steamed along like a giant boiled kettle.

It has travelled far with many scars,
Battled continents and violent seas with ease,
From the cape around the horn,
And onto the west indies.

It seeks and finally finds its place to rest and moor,
But alas the storm that winter did not pause,
It reached and breached the gates and harbour walls,
The fox was in through failing doors.

It attacked the beauty in its finest fettles,
Her belly broke from bow to stern,
It sharply shifts and lists while the candles burn,
Then sinks down to the bottom where it groans and settles.

It's fate and history long forgotten,
But for local shanty hymns,
The bulk is left but timbers rotten,
With cut back beams and withered limbs.

From endless tides it now resides,
Out of site and local memory,
Through rusted tears it counts the years,
Underneath a sea of nettles.

Her hands were so sticky and started to swell
Ugly, red, burgeoning paddles
convulsion nervously at her sides and then at her mouth as she held back a whimper
(The neighbors were still fighting
so no one would have heard anyway.)
Anyway
Her eyes bulged
as heart heart felt heavy, then light again, then heavy
When her eyes began to swim, she tried
she did
she tried to get to a telephone
but instead she collapsed
like an egg from the carton
and laid there
until the neighbors stopped fighting.

Like blood slowly
ballooning into a tiny orb
from a pin *****.

It simply swelled
and bulged…

As it clung precariously
upon the tip of my nib.

A slight tremble,
almost a hesitation -
seemingly afraid to take
the leap of faith.
Afraid to take the plunge,
only to wilfully break
the expanse of blank parchment.
Afraid to taint the whiteness
with the ruthlessness
of indelible black.

once there was a man.
he wandered twisting caverns
without a thought,
swaying as he walked.

he came upon a button
on the rotting ground
and stooped low to pick it up,
holding it between careless fingers.

then there was a man with a button.
his ambling gait aimless
among crumbling walls of dirt,
and ceilings of the same.

he came upon a needle,
rusted but neatly threaded,
squatting to look and struggling
to grab it between nonexistent nails.

then there was a man with a button
and a neatly threaded needle,
turning endless corners
with a hand brushing along every wall.

he came upon a soft, dark shirt
and bent to pick it up,
noticing that, upon inspection,
it was missing a button.

then there was a man with a button and
a neatly threaded needle, wearing a dark shirt.
his eyes scanned the rotting ground,
holding the needle and button in a tense hand.

he came upon a pair of linen pants,
midnight black and tailored well.
he stepped into them, tucked in his shirt,
and continued on his meandering way.

then there was a man with a button
and a neatly threaded needle in one hand,
wearing a dark shirt tucked into tailored pants
stumbling through dank tunnels.

he came upon a pair of shined onyx shoes
and put them on without pomp,
leaning against the crumbling walls
to lift each foot into a shoe.

then there was a man with a button
and a neatly threaded needle in one hand,
wearing a dark shirt tucked into tailored pants,
dragging shined shoes through never-ending passages.

he came upon a suit jacket,
noticing that the pockets bulged with a pair of gloves
as he knelt to don it. he slipped the
gloves onto shaking hands.

once there was a man dressed for a funeral,
a man who was under the impression that
he had no occasion to attend in such attire,
a man who continued to wander infinite caverns.

he came upon a chamber
with sobered steps and saw a fitting sight.
A casket lay in the center of the room,
surrounded by wilted roses on the rotting floor.

then there was a man dressed for a funeral
who looked to his left and beheld
a veiled woman in spectacular mourning dress,
whose cold hands reached to hold his own.

her delicate fingers came upon the button
and neatly threaded needle. she surveyed
his garb and found the spot where his shirt
was missing a closure.

then there was a man dressed for a funeral
who, legs shaking, allowed a veiled woman
to expertly sew the button back onto his shirt.
a voice came from behind the veil:

"pay your respects."

his legs seemed to move without his say
to the center of the room.
he watched as his arms, no longer his own,
lifted the ebony lid to reveal

a beautiful cream silk lining,
bright against the Stygian casket,
gently cradling a man dressed for a funeral
with a mismatched button sewn to his shirt.

In her final moments, prostrate on the bed,
she imagined herself flying through the stars,
an intergalactic explorer, discovering new planets
and naming new creatures never before seen.
She stops at a small blue marvel,
flooded with water full of strange fish.
She can’t be sure if this is the home she knew
or the home she will come to know
but she finds it beautiful and tranquil.

In the distance, she sees a giant red star.
During her flight there, she feels a sadness,
as if her body is finally cutting away her tethers
and she is now less attached to it,
the freedom of exploring the universe at her leisure
tainted by the fact she is all alone out here.
She always believed a journey was not worth making alone,
it just wasn’t the same without someone to share the wonder with.
Out here, in the cold darkness of space,
the loneliness speared her heart.

The red star bulged at its equator ready to burst any moment.
Dark spots swirled and danced together on its surface,
growing and cooling and shrinking and disappearing,
new ones soon to take their places.
She flew around to the other side and saw herself,
stretched across the entire surface of the star,
lying on her bed, barely holding on,
wires with clear fluid and blood flowing through them.
In the image, her eyes flickered open slightly.
The star shrunk to a tiny point of light
then exploding in brilliant whiteness…

…gasping for breath as her eyes opened wide,
the bright light above her burning her eyes.
She was all alone in her room,
just a machine beeping frantically.
She was back in her own universe,
all alone with no one to share her journey with.
She cried herself to sleep that night,
her right hand holding her left
and she dreamed of a star exploding,
giving birth to a new her.