Untitled

That tree had a

five o’clock shadow

of moss on its face

as the lilting light’s

atomic edge shaved

down its rough neck into

the hours of burgeoning

night. I wonder

if the singing cicadas

through their din and

clatter realized how

close they were? Always

straitening their stance,

straddling a wet leaf

and a soaked twig.

The night cares

not for what we see during

the day’s light and cares

nothing for the translucence

of venous wings that crunch

and dry in death.

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.