May Flowers (Or, Morning of a Yard Sale)

I noticed you’d become a person
amidst rusting bubble machines
and young adult paperbacks.

We drank coffee through straws,
sipped early morning traffic like Folgers
in our cups, but better. The news?

I’ve been off making poor decisions
with women less attractive and less kind.
You’ve built yourself

particle by t-cell by tendon
into the woman across from me,
exceeding limits and expectations.

Sunday's Sermon, First Draft

You’re afraid of beetles.
"Not the band," you say,
"the bug." Different species,
spelling, minus or plus an A.

One singular vowel twists identity
into a surprise! gotcha.
The equivalent in humans?
A soft spot for heroine,

the book of Job, unfortunate
tendencies toward frugality,
that balding man you'll meet
at the gym? Yes, the very same

gentlemen who'll slip off his ring
and expect you to ignore
the jewel's nagging jab
in your pocket (he had none)

as he goes down on you
in the empty Pilates studio--
the one surrounded in mirrors--
where, while his tongue is going

the wrong direction,
(you're too polite to tell him)
you look back at you, hoping
to see a little more than dime

bags of groceries, marijuana,
dropped calls and causes
under your eyelids. Your youth.
Your forties. Both ever faithful,

unlike you and Mr. Nose-in-Your-Snatch
who, having gotten his rocks off
puts his rock back on
and leaves you on the blue mat
with your secret

around tired knees. Tell me.
Do you feel baptized?
Do you feel saved?
Have you found your 'A'?

If You Were

here in this docked captain’s bed
I would commit no sin, simply
feel my forearm against the soft stomach

under your tank top, resting
like a proudly sworn drifter who,
having been offered a fireplace

in the month of a particularly December
December, leaves his pride outside
with exhausted snowmen

Because She Caught It Last Year

As loud women in louder dresses use fat elbows
and hard hips to win solace in the spiraling dead flowers,

the lady near the catered cooling mashed potatoes
sips stale champagne, her fingernails hooked hard
into folded arms.

These Here Treetops

Dip and cross, the water drop, the hotdog stands, the dove. My John the Baptist a yellow eyed ex con in Washington Square who asked me for a dollar, said he likes “mah style.” Rather, he likes my full pocket but I’d rather appreciate the beauty of his empty hand. I don’t curl up to concrete but I need these pennies. My piggy bank still suffers from an eating disorder, my pockets are perpetually full of holes. God blesses me, I’m told. I see my guilt in his rotting teeth, in the subtext of his sunken shoulders. He won’t come-for-carry-me-home. My hard lived grit, swing low, fingerprint, voice tambour is branded on big apple cattle, in tock tick diners with soggy avocado bread, the entire family tree of bucked stars, cousin loving, holding hands across the grid, a mapped hammock, holding baby. Let the bow break, go on, let it.

Reach

Your mother died; it was raining.
You took your truck down 74

parked on the shoulder

stretched out on the hood

and opened your mouth

like a newborn.
People stopped to help,
assuming there had been an accident.

Refusing to dry off,

you slumped into bed
a wet rag, instantly still,

like the raccoon we found
behind the shovels last March.

I almost touched you then,
but recoiled, drenched

by the echo of your whisper in that cold garage,
“Is it dead?”

To Uncle Mark, Who Sat in His Car, Shut the Garage and Turned on the Ignition

I.

The upholstery—a bed, or so I imagine it became
as you reclined in the driver’s seat of your car,
perhaps laughing,
or tense, focused, waiting for sleep.
How long did it take?

II.

In my parent’s kitchen,
you pretended to make your eyeball disappear
and reappear
out of your mouth, behind your ear, behind mine.
At age ten, I believed you, agog.
I still believe you, reappear.

III.

The program from your memorial concert
is buried under floor clutter;
I find your face occasionally, grinning
sheepishly up from the pale yellow paper,
dog eared and wrinkled
like those eyes of yours, smirking,
worn and loved, oh yes—loved.

Mother's Day

Ashes, ashes, a Vesuvian victory.
People encased, human monuments
to the world’s inevitables:
molten rock, my mother’s graying hair,
death gently unfolding.

A baby’s first fist, grip, release.
I held the earth with you,
staining my hands with past hands,
past teeth and tongues and
mother’s singing, singing.

EULOGY

Eulogy

“If a bullet should go through my head,
let that bullet go through every closet door.”
(Harvey Milk)

I. At Home for Easter

Jane stood while her father smoked on the back porch, nagging her about his future grand kids, tick tock tick. “Unless of course, you’re sterile,” he said. The elephant between them drowned him out, trumpeting.

II. Spilling the Gin and Tonic

We watched it spread
across the tarnished wood like the heat
from hand to back to hand.
You wore my jacket when I offered,
like a 50’s quarter back to the head Doris Day
oh gee, me? Well, golly.
I offered because you said were cold, but you liar,
you were sweating like a pitcher of sweet tea on a glass patio table in Alabama,
drenched
beneath your denim and cotton.
You opened wide
and I went south, our bodies

a makeshift Alamo
remember, remember?
I covered your mouth as you spread
across the creased sheets like the heat
from hand to back to
my hand, a Chris Columbus,
disappearing inside your willing India
I knew then I would kill

you for this,
for your subtle, well adapted pride,
your trust in my ability to transform,
for scraping apart my hours of work
with your tongue and teeth,
my palms the thin of your arm my breasts.
We were we, two entangled roots,
stretching towards the fragrance of living.
I blame you.

IV. Hush

Jill, what did you expect? That in morning’s arrival I’d kiss you till the bricks of my beloved Jericho fell, fell down? Did you think we’d watch the release, exuberant, feeling our own?
No. You knew. You knew. You knew.