early morning sunrise

I wonder if when the

raccoon opened its eyes

in this twilight of the hot day,

it knew of its imminent death

by metal and rubber in the cool

of the dawn.  It woke, like it

does every dusk, scavenging

for food. (Such a hateful word,

scavenger.) Did it realize that

the car, bearing down at a “reckless”

29 miles per hour, delivering

the early morning newspaper,

would bring a kind of solitude

and quiet to its hunger, that it

would sate its belly with blood and

its throat with bile and yesterday’s

supper. It lay upturned on the dashed

yellow lines, it’s spine, a perpendicular

twist in its own defecate. Twilight coming

on again and again, done and undone.

Its last breath shuttered

by a closed mouth.

Tornado Sirens

My mom was late that

night. Ham, corn,

potatoes au gratin; milk,

bread, applesauce; good

china, silver flatware.

(An empty place setting.)

Even at twelve I had

an awful sense that

something bad was

happening; I didn’t have

the language for it. I

heard my dad through

his lips,            pulled

straight: “Who were you

with?” That heavy question.

Like the green, still sky

before a tornado. I didn’t

know where to take shelter.

Concrete Ramps

The fissure that

jutted up between

each cement slab

made a slight ramp for

this chubby boy to hoist

his bicycle up just a few

inches. The angle of the corner

blocked his few of the fat man rounding

it just enough that when he strained and pulled

his burgeoning biceps the front wheel, shining in

all of its glorious shining chrome that whirred and

reflected the tops of trees and the car tires it whizzed by,

landed squarely in the fat man’s crotch. The tire wedged between

his belly and what was hidden by years of overeating, held in space

and time if only for enough time for the chubby boy to peer into a possible into

future.

Maybes

“Okay.” I’m sorry

about last night. I should

have just gone

to the performance.

Had I known about it

beforehand, I would

have planned accordingly.  

I love you, and while

I’m not sorry

for not bringing

your shoes, I am about

missing your performance.

I’ll do better

with that. “I love you

too.”

Grandmothers

She died in an old

rocker that had carved

faces though worn at the nose

and eye sockets, their walnut hair once grooved, deep

and smooth, and finely hewn, brought bald by

friction, covered by a

blindfold of fingers.

The hands that covered blank

and eerie feminine faces now

clutched tightly in a grasp that

stripped breath from the wooden mouth

long sealed with old varnish and now

flesh. Those hands reflected, white knuckled,

purpled at the center, the astonished look of a dying,

stopping heart and lungs that deflated like

a Depression-era accordion. A last breathless

sonic boom that escaped with barely an utter, a

gasp for a last look at a home with a fifty

year foundation though cracked at its corners.

The tattered velour seat cover held

as many legs as its spindled back that

now held this unmoving figure forward

and back, forward and back: it did not

move but for a slight grade in the foundation

barely breathing the rockers

forward only silent centimeters

at a time.

He walked through the front door

and called: Mary. 

Mother's Day

when i said i think about you every day

you cried in front of me like a child

being scolded for dirtying a dress or

spilling milk or eating a cookie before

dinner. i thought you were crying because

you missed me and thought about me

everyday. but you cried because you

were too afraid to admit that you didn't

know me any more.

Untitled

There's a boy wearing a helmet

rolling up the concrete ramp

just outside the window. I wonder

where he wants to go?

He can go in or he can go out

but he can't go home because

he's already here.  He rolled

past a an older man, shirtless, gray

chest hair and mottled patches of

silvery black on his back. On the

back of his chair there was a Pittsburgh

Steelers flag hoisted and swaying

to the rhythms of his delicate rocking

and the feeble wind.  I can tell

that they are not friends. He's

much too old to relate to the boy

except they share the experience

of calloused hands and dirty diapers

and the same feeling of watching

someone who still pretends to love them

drive away just slightly, the ever

slightest depression of a foot on a

vertical pedal, too fast. If he looks 


up at the sun just enough, 
his helmet will catch the tear 
from the left and right cheek and 
collect just at the top

of his smooth ear and the

bottom of his hair. 

Dead wood

If, say, a cherry wood

dresser of drawers

represents dead wood,

what then represents

a dead person?

And why should

this dresser of drawers

stand year after year

polished and precise

in a corner with clothes and things?

(Socks with holes and panty hose, a slip

from Montgomery Ward--and hand-

sewn initialed handkerchiefs, an empty

Dopp kit in one drawer, an old unsigned

love letter. [You knew, though.]

In another, a twenty-year old

construction-paper card with a crayoned

picture of you and him and us,

a crucifix.) 
________________________________


Do you remember that

sweater I got for you that one

Christmas? It has holes in it now

from being unworn and moth-eaten.

I'm sorry for that. Is this wood somehow

a dead reflection of you or just the

things you touched, of the things

that you were given by those that

have forgotten you?

I somehow don't have a word or

words to say what I just could not

say at any point even when I

whispered "I love you" and "goodnight"

and I called your name up and down

and up the stairs again and once more

because I felt lucky, I felt like you might

just hear me through your exhale of

cigarette smoke. I wondered, often, as

a child, if your breath would smell sweeter

had you been a little kinder or had smoked

a little less.  But I learned that kindness is 
neither inhaled or exhaled: it was in the lightness of

your hand on my shoulder and the circles

it made on my troubled belly.

Open Window

Why don't you open the window?

he asked her.

I don't know she said.

Don't you like listening to

the outside?

I don't know.

It went on like this for a moment.

There was something outside that window

the hum of a not too distant muffler, a June bug,

maybe, if he concentrated hard enough, it was

a moth’s wings applauding the porch light; it

was just beyond him but closer to the

double-paned glass. 

It was something that she could not hear. Did

she not want to hear what he heard? Did she not

love the sound of lavender on the air just barely

creeping through the mesh of the screen:

how it crawled in the moonlit grass. It perched itself

in the bloomed pear tree—it rested itself in a jagged

half circle keeping the night bugs at bay.

The window still closed.

He listened and waited. After all

he had imagined in love of a night

within just a whisper, just a breath

of his own corralled excitement, what

he heard, after all, was her xylophonic

snore.

Hop-scotch-ing

A chalk outline

of an imagined rainbow colors

the hopscotch pinks

and blues through

a set of numbers that

tell a story.

Ouch

I tried to

put a thing together

but it ended

up sounding like

dry twigs snapping like a

chilled pinky finger.

Untitled

I wonder if my body

or my husband (What's 

your name again?)

will release me from

one of these prisons?  I lay

here wondering if its

a cell of graying, stretching skin

frayed in its edges and cuticles.

Minnesota’s nickname is “Land of 10,000 Lakes”;

"Land of 10,000 Liver Spots" is my body's

nickname. Dotted and mottled lakes of

blurred brown leaking into vacant

pale spaces a field misspent, bereft. Or is

it four walls with a 10’x12’ checker-board

floor stained with urine. Whoever

thought that pale-green paint

(sea –foam is for mother-in-law suites)

soothed hot, leaking nerves was an asshole.

Obviously he doesn’t know

a thing about ripe pain.

The point, of course, is

that I cannot.

Harvest

I must admit,

I thought I’d never

hold your hand.

Remember when we

walked to the cemetery? I

should have been more

considerate of your feelings

and your upbringing. But your

skirt hemmed just below your

mid-thigh panted for you.

We lay down, the headstones

above our heads, steely cityscapes

against an empty sky.

A shadow within a shadow,

colder somehow, even

under a sun that exposed

more than we were

ready to see.

The headstones became dead stones,

interrupted your rhythm, my timing

so we crushed nearby

corn stalks to hold our body’s

weight against the sharp field

and we kept time like

ancient metronomes.

Love Collides

A girl alighted

along a leaf-strewn path unaware

of the birds

that frolicked before

her. On a bike a

boy rode frightful

full of wrath

on a collision course with

love, for sure.

For a lad

such as this it will

be hard to

mend a torn

heart from where there is

nothing to rend.