Current Issue

Finding pictures of you
at the foot of the lighthouse,
hands balled in your pockets
as if they were hiding something,
your smile half-cocked,
I can’t help thinking about
how many beacons in life we miss.

That cough you had for months,
your tired eyes and gray pallor,
a diminished appetite

and me suggesting you were lifting too much at the gym
or just dehydrated,
perhaps coming down with a cold.

We looked with vacant eyes
while the lighthouse remained vigilant
to the perils of the wily ocean,
a determined soldier against the dark
with blind hope burning.

A flock of painted flamingos
glows fuchsia above the entrance gate.
The arcade beckons: a wooden pavilion
where Skee Ball reigns, and Madam Sonya—
inside a gilded cage—
doles out for a dainty dime
predictions for the coming week.

Her head swivels from side to side,
mesmerizes. Long lacquered nails
boast a Russian shade of red. I gaze
into heavy-lidded eyes, half expecting a wink,
an invitation to embrace her wild gypsy world.
If I bury my face in her saucy dress,
will the sequins reveal even more? I implore,
I just turned ten. What does my future hold?

My parents escort me back into the light.
Today is enough, they sigh. The sun
gleams like a yellow present,
a feast for here and now.
Popcorn perfumes the hot breeze.
Cotton candy tickles, turns my cheeks pink.

If you are among the ever-shrinking number
of us TV buffs old enough to remember

Dangerous Assignment, an early NBC “cop show”
starring burly Brian Donlevy as Special Agent

Steve Mitchell, you may recall that all thirty-nine
episodes each opened with a shadowy scene

in which a large, hurled dagger imbedded itself
in the wall behind our hero, who’d dodge aside

while melodramatic music established beyond doubt
that what we were about to witness was Serious

Business, another of Steve’s perilous adventures.
But even then, at age six, I was a tough audience,

skeptical by nature. How truly hazardous could
every week’s assignment really be, I wondered, if

the Bad Guys were so invariably maladroit that
the knife—scary as it was—always missed its mark ?

Editor’s Note: For an amusing diversion, you can Google
Dangerous Assignment and view an episode or two.

Yesterday at our site, I opened
a jar of oysters, drained
the liquor, dipped them in hot
butter, in bread crumbs.

A crisp sizzle, fragrant ooze, a taste
of the sea. I thought of the first
time I ate oysters—I was pregnant
with David, who almost lived.

Last night, a sudden storm pelted;
rain soaked our canvas.
A ceiling spot dripped tears;
we caught them in a bowl.

Dark interior, subtly lit. Morning sun
paints a drape golden.

A woman holds a delicate balance scale
to weigh coins, pearls. A jewel

Box anchors an old table. She wears
a blue jacket edged in white fur,

a full golden skirt. Her right hand
holds steady, young, immaculate.

A sheer shawl caresses her alabaster
face, her blush-touch cheek.

Almost a smile. On the wall behind her
we see a painting—the last judgment.

Hands reach new-lit hopes. It seems almost
a peaceful weighing-in, a life balance.

Dark interior, subtly lit. Morning sun
paints a drape golden.

The worst time of year: Easter,
when the rocks from St. Rose of Lima
parochial school howled for vengeance
for my personally crucifying Jesus.

Only during Christmas was it less
than suicidal to walk that gauntlet:
every house glittering like a multi-colored gem,
yard trees blooming with lights,

Santas and sleds on roofs or dashing
across snow-pillowy front yards.
And everyone with a cheerful greeting.
I’d wave and trill the safe-passage password,

“Merry Christmas!” basking in all of us
being neighbors, if not exactly friends,
but for the time being no one wished death
on anyone else, in the Generous Season.

Sandy Spring Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Dear Kathy,

I’m sorry I coaxed my mouse
closer and closer to the space
that read Leave,
and then left.

It wasn’t that celebrated Quaker
silence that drove me out.
These days, so many of my
waking hours are passed
in silence
(while in my dreams,
I jabber on).

It was everything that wasn’t silence:
the endless instructions about a time to speak,
how to see all the participants,
or how to see just one,
the coughs and shifting on the benches
amplified to decibels beyond
their normal volume,
the white noise that still
was noise and never silence.

It was when your daughter in Hawaii,
fulfilling a final promise to you,
played a recording of Cat Stevens
singing Morning Has Broken,
which itself came off broken and sour,
that I decided to leave.
I’ve taken rain and sub-zero temperatures,
mud, and bad eulogies, but I couldn’t take this.
I’m sorry.
Instead, I jumped to YouTube
and watched a video of a man
in black tie and tails in a public square
In some fountainous European city

playing an aria from Carmen
on a table of wine glasses filled
with varying levels of water that matched
a series of rising musical scales.

Expertly he circled his fingers
over the rims of the glasses,
and mimicked even
the tremolo of a diva. And after
each perfectly executed passage,
his hands flew up
high above the glasses
as if to join the pigeons
in the square vying for crumbs.
It drew me in instantly.

At dinner, I drank a glass
of wine to your memory
(Oh, I know I would have drunk
it anyway, but what the hell…).
Before I lifted the glass to my lips
I ran my fingers over the rim,
and produced an irritating rub
like wiper blades on a windshield
run out of rain. Maybe it was
my contribution to your
flubbed and muddled wake,
which should and would have been
as beautiful as that aria from Carmen
Cat Stevens sang. The Blackbird has spoken…
But I didn’t hear what comes next.

or cigarettes rolling between
the lips. Meanwhile, I look out
my window, see snow or cherry
blossoms falling or fog crawling
up the bank. Outside the chain-link

fence, a heron pauses amid all
that gray gauze and causes me
to do a double-take. Unnerved,
I can’t shake off this feeling of
being overheard and observed.

One straight leg, one bent backwards
like an elbow poking a rib,
it stands as if frozen in an ancient
Egyptian hieroglyph. That still,
that profound, signifying

something dignified. Then, without
a word, it turns its head and beak
and looks that long and hard, at me,
punctuating my own question
of what meaning to make of it.

we stumbled on around. Tel Aviv,
the sweep of beach bounded on each side

by sky and sea and ancient geo-
graphy. The sand behaved like sand in-

tends to do. We removed our shoes,
crab-walked towards the shore, the ebb and flow

of waves, clogged with sediment, flotsam
of tourists and jellyfish. Our two

shadows stretching out over the sand,
holding hands, with no one yelling

at us, telling us what we could or could
not do in words we did not understand.

Too bad we didn’t stay together,
bound by common tongue and way of life.
Things may have turned out better then;
as one, we could have driven
the barbarians into the sea
and devoted ourselves to enjoying
the beauty of our women,
the swiftness and strength of our horses.

skipping stones. That day
he explained that the water
flowing past would eventually

find the ocean. Amazed,
I looked downstream
toward the wide meander

& pictured breaking waves
a hundred miles away,
maybe a thousand.

My father smiled at me
& lit his pipe, then bent
to pick an acorn cap,

cleaned it on his sleeve.
Together we set it sailing.

When the banquet is over, I pick up t-bones, chicken bones,
ribs. Bus boys in short red jackets eye me until I say,
“Para caldo.”

Then they help. We talk about bitter tops of carrots.
Thick butt of celery, onion, always the onion.

How their mothers used chicken feet and necks. Peppercorns,
bay leaves with their gorgeous alias hojas de laurel.

“Cuanto tiempo?” And I say, “All night at least on a very low flame.”
They tell me how they miss it. Things are not as good here
as the stories about here, but broth from a can? “Eso no esta bien.”

Their boss swears, puts them back to work. Scowls at me.
When I get home, I’ll find my big stockpot and start chopping.

Wake up at 3:00, check the broth like I used to make sure
the kids haven’t kicked off all the covers.

Dip in with a ladle. Bring the bones up. See how clean they are.
Tell the animals thank you. See? Almost nothing from
your short lives has been wasted.

You were cute, are cute.
I loved how you said you
had a damp November
in your soul. After which you
kissed me a little.

You didn’t have the blues
then, did you! The Pequod
isn’t leaving tomorrow.
You said so yourself.

I don’t need to stay out
all night. And I’m not clingy.
Just don’t ghost me, Ish.
I hate that.

I’ll kiss you back better
this time.
Maybe I’ll walk
around in my new
underwear. Something
you can’t forget when
you’re far, far away.

The truest truths are the most banal, while those that feel important
Might last for a little while, but then they slip away. It’s just another day
In which each person’s life is real, but doesn’t seem like anything to anyone else.
Each person’s death is real too, although it’s not like anything to anyone—
A life simply goes away, while the other ones continue in their invisible ways
Until they’re over while the world they were never part of carries on.
That’s what’s so strange: no matter whose it is or how long it’s going to last,
It’s everything there is and all it can remember. And then it’s gone.

The question is what’s real in our absence. All those stars
Of course, but what about the rest? The truths of mathematics
And cosmology, even when there’s no one there to entertain them?
Gödel seemed to think that numbers were just there to see, like stars,
“With a faculty akin to vision,” although the issue isn’t so much
What exists as how anything we think be true unless we make it up,
Since without us there aren’t any thoughts at all. Sometimes I think
The answer’s on the tip of my tongue, but then it lapses into second thoughts
The way poems do and mathematics never does. Necessity seems woven
Into the fabric of the world, even though we know that isn’t true—
Which brings me back to where I started, with those pictures of the stars.

Can we really try to think about those things we can’t even imagine
In the way that we can think about our lives? Of course we can
In one sense, since attempting to imagine them constitutes our lives.
And yet that sounds too easy, as though the need to rise above ourselves
Knew no bounds, and lets us try to think of everywhere as home.
Those trillions of galaxies aren’t just far away—they’re as inaccessible
As our souls, for our souls are also things that we don’t understand.
There’s simply mass and energy distributed in time and space, encompassing
The Pillars of Creation and the breakfast that I had across the street this morning,
One of them a figment of my own imagination and the other one of God’s.
I know that sounds like Bishop Berkeley, but it’s just a way of arguing
With those voices in my heart that want me to take the universe for granted.
Because we think we can see it, even when we can’t imagine what it is.
Those clouds of interstellar dust and galaxies receding at the speed of light?
All I know is that I sit here at my desk each morning, drinking coffee and waiting
For a world to become manifest in the void of space, the silence of the stars.

to the glare, it chases after a crack,
though it’s never quite quick enough

to slap a paw down on its tail, the crack
faster, and smart enough not to run

in a straight line, having been chased
by one clumsy sun or another before,

while another crack from the same
litter dashes away in another direction,

popping and booming, distracting
the sun, which stops far out on the ice,

catching its breath, where it stands
long enough to settle into a puddle.

In my neighbor’s backyard tree, two crows have made a nest
in a high branch, barely visible, though each time they land

the limb bends a bit, the children squawking for food.

They are a rare breed.

Unlike most birds the teenagers are not shooed away
by the parents and can hang around as long as five years,

feeding the mother so she can incubate her eggs, stand guard,
defend the territory.

This only occurs in the American Crow.

If we are early to rise we are “up with the crows,” when we drive
a straight road to work we go “as the crow flies,” if we admit wrong

and are ashamed we “eat crow.” We build crows’ nests
on the masts of ships to scout for danger, we crow

about our successes. From the end of the Civil War
until the 1960s is commonly called the Jim Crow era.

As we age we develop “crow’s feet” around our weary eyes.
Crow memory is legend.

They can not only remember

If you’ve ever hurt a crow, but pass your facial features
on to their offspring so they can hate you, too.

I leave them piles of peanuts.

I admire their glossy black coats. I don’t know
half of what they’ve seen or a fraction of what they know.

I have witnessed a crow funeral and I can tell you they do know
how to send a friend out. That’s why whenever I see a crow

I say I love you crow. I say I pledge allegiance to you crow.
I’m not sure they understand human language,

but I’m not sure they don’t.

café au lait and beignets
still hot from the deep fryer—
my dad more than six months dead

and my dad-in-law less than
one month sifted through
that mortuary furnace

and sitting up high
in a walk-in closet waiting
for what? Another mentor buried

in a shroud—first green
Jewish burial that I ever
pallbeared for—and I almost

lost my shit the next day
when all of this felt
like too much—barely missed

my flight and stayed home
from full-blown Dixie blown out
of Bix’s cornet if only

they’d break that thing out
from museum cold storage!—
Mississippi Goddam

covered by some cover band
gone whole hog on that
festival stage in Jackson Square

bringing us all back to life.

Decembers it would freeze to glass
as hard as crystal, sure as slate.

Nights we would take our skates
and meet at the pond to try the ice

while dotted round the bank fires
blazed and sparked the heavens

in sympathy with the stars. A log would serve
as a bench on which to sit and wrestle

the skates onto our feet. We’d wobble down
to the rugged verge, stepping tiptoe

onto the ice, sensing death beneath the surface,
before our sharp blades scored the pond

with turn and counterturn of pirouettes
slicing a fleeting song across its face.

Moonlight covers us
like a fleeting thought.

How many times
have we looked up

at the moon,
how many times

have we said
we are sorry,

how many times
have we turned away?

When we cut down trees to build our huts,
houses, and hotels, cleared forest and put up
fences so we could grow our crops, raise
our cattle, and claim ownership of fields;
when we constructed cities with skyscrapers,
sewage systems, and concrete paths,
when we made way for electric wires
and leveled the ground for power stations,
Mother Earth was there, watching.

When we embraced wood, coal, and oil
to keep us comfy, to cook our eggs
and barbequed chicken, to drive our cars
and fuel our trains and planes, to take daily
hot showers and to hang Christmas lights;
when for our convenience we let slide those
who lied about the harm to our air and water;
when we cut, dug, and drilled for more and more,
Mother Earth was there, watching.

When we loaded landfills with old paint,
detergents, pills, and electronic equipment,
with our garbage that could have been
recycled or fixed; when we packaged single-use
consumer goods in plastic containers;
when we polluted our rivers, lakes, and oceans
by dumping industrial waste and spraying
our farms with toxic pesticides and fertilizers,
Mother Earth was there, watching.

When we heard all the warnings but did nothing;
when we saw the ice caps melting but did nothing;
when we suffered through floods, hurricanes,
fires, and tornadoes but did nothing; when we
could barely breathe the air but did nothing;
when we heard the CEOs and politicians lie
in the name of economic and political gain
but did nothing; when we continued our idiocy,
Mother Earth decided she’d had enough of us.

raw as a blowtorch in my throat
from an alley garage where he
kept his still. Buck a bottle.
Drag races on the streets,

in stadiums, where our guys
always boasted they’d drive
better. Souped up cars roaring.
Kickball on the corner. Hockey

when the streets flooded, froze.
Furtive cigarettes. Necking
in back seats of those cars.
Long low voiced phone calls

to girlfriends about boys
or slights from other girls.
Always a voice muttering
You’ll die here, get out.

Get out!

I eat a hamburger; now me
also. Animal, vegetable, pill:
All enter my mouth to be

absorbed into blood, shat
out. We live by devouring.
Vegetarians think only animals

feel, but botanists know plants
communicate, feel, live together
in communities of green.

Yes, weird. I hold an apple, firm,
yellow in my hand, weighing
down my palm. How can this

apple turn into my thumb or shin?
We gobble other living beings
just to go on breathing. But

what we eat has eaten too. Every
being on earth consumes others.
Our bodies are only lent us.

a gyro for take-out,
lilacs in a vase, peonies,
chocolates, a book given
me I longed to read.

I learned that from my
mother: Life is hard
often nasty. If you can,
enjoy whatever you can.

Nothing fancy needed here.
I enjoy much of my life—
not pain, sickness, storms
but a plethora of small

pleasures—food I cook,
the company of my cats
and daily, this marriage
I lucked into at last.

The foreshadow of disasters,
fire, hurricane, accident,
disease hover overhead
worming into my mind.

The worst memories, most
painful sights bubble up,
keep churning. Why? I
don’t recall that when

I was younger. Now night
is booby-trapped. I try
to refocus, summon sleep
from where it’s hiding.

Where is my strength
resolve? Who owns my
mind anyhow? My brain
was my best weapon.

Now it turns on me when
I shut off the light, dark-
ness within like black
fire consuming sleep.

The rhododendrons look in
and the catbirds comment.
The woodsy scents waft
over naked happy bodies.

On the translucent roof
oak leaves make patterns
sun, shade, sun, shade
all dappled and dancing.

Only summer gives us
beauty to match our joy,
times that feel as if earth
too is making love.

Outside the screen some
creature was stirring leaves,
huffing, shuffling. Deer
don’t huff. We have no

bears. Perhaps a coywolf?
A fat raccoon? A fox? That
would delight me. If so,
please move in. keep

the rabbits from gardens,
the chipmunks that take
one bite from each ripe
tomato. Help yourself.

Whoever is out there
you have as much right
as us to this land. I turned
over and went back to sleep.

She melts into his shoulder, beaming,
as if that were all she ever wanted,

the pavement beneath their boots sloppy
with snow, the sooty tracks of taxis

and delivery trucks probably oozing slush
into their socks. Her fingers are bare in the

wake-up-now cold, in the oh-wow cold.
They’re pretending for the camera to be

heading off somewhere: maybe to buy
a pack of the cigs he smoked then,

to a recording studio, or just home—but
together! My father was a photographer

and I knew what he’d have done to get
that shot—but I wanted whatever they

were doing to be real. Believed I’d be
Suze someday, that love was no pose,

that no one like Dad would have to snap
his fingers: Look here! 1, 2, 3, say “Money!”

He never said more than “Morning, Mr. President,”
or “Evening, Missus Coolidge,” but his silence concealed
volumes of experience, the ineffability of his knowledge:
a man to admire.

Older brother of Al and Frank Capone,
though he himself was a prohibition agent,
going after the bootleggers,
he’d left home at sixteen
to join the circus as a roustabout,
changed his name from James Vincenzo Capone
to Richard Hart, after his movie idol,
William S. Hart, star of the silent Westerns.

He’d earned the name “Two Gun” after a series
of successful raids as a prohibition agent,
the same nickname as the matinee idol,
claimed to have served in France during the Great War,
though the Army Department didn’t have a record of that,
and the year we spent the summer in the Dakotas
he was assigned to the Cheyenne River Indian reservation.
Can’t say that Grace and I ever slept more peacefully
than we did that summer,
under his care.

In her shocking 1927 book, The President’s Daughter,
Nan Britton claimed her daughter Elizabeth was Warren’s too.
Britton wasn’t even born yet when Warren married Florence,
a quarter century younger than Warren.
As a teenager she’d been smitten by him,
her father told Warren, one dad to another.
She moved to New York when she graduated
from high school, worked as a secretary.

Britton lost the paternity lawsuit, having no
concrete evidence.

After Congressman Mauser’s vicious attacks
during the the cross-examination, Britton’s case was dead.
I understand she moved to Oregon.
Florence refused to honor Warren’s so-called “promise”
to support the child, Elizabeth Ann.

I’m standing behind O.J. at the P.O.,
but only in the most literal sense.
He might be mailing the millions he owes
the Goldmans or Browns, or his confession,
notarized, but I have my doubts. Nothing tense
here; with the postal workers he’s joshing
and joking and they’re laughing and laughing—great!
His days of major rage are behind him now,
except for that traffic incident, oh,
and that little dustup with his latest
blonde girlfriend. But none of us dozen or so
should be concerned, and nor should he: his house
his pension, his trophies, all safe from seizure,
leaving him to live his life of leisure.

Praise be the calm that comes with old age,
a cold age. You wear sweaters even in May.
Your body can no longer rise to the occasion,
out of the chair quickly enough to get where?

How much joy do you have left
in that old sack of cartilage anyway?
How many times can a heart break?

Now when you see a wreck howling
in the street, raging, ranting, cursing—
you remember he was once someone’s perfect child.

Praise be the calm that comes with old age.
You rush past him to get home.

The thunder augurs rain, a sibilant sound,
the drip of the shower, the knob turns
until it cannot turn any more.

Outside my window is a plish,
plash, plop, a “pl” sound—
isn’t “pleurer” the French verb “to cry”?

Now the rain is heavier, sounds
like wind, wild and whipping slantwise
onto the street, a white, wet noise.

If you’re talking to your psychiatrist,
the sound will drown out your voice.
The rain cries louder than you do.

By the time I had pictured my cornea
as coastline, the hinterland of my retina,
the exam was done, my dimming vision
with its own cartography, a pair of maps
not unlike those old ones in museums,
perhaps, their charted worlds fading.

At two a.m. you’re staring
at a less-than-quarter moon,
its meager shine upon the lawn.

At three a book slides
from your hands as if
you’ve finally nodded off.

Whenever you lie down
your eyes click open like the lid
of your grandfather’s pocket watch,

seconds blinking into minutes
into the wee hours. By dawn
the moon’s a Cheshire smile

upon an evening half a world
from here, another day
before you like a recurring dream.

The one describing a walk in the rain
or along the shore,
some misty epiphany in the offing.

The one with Mom paying bills
at the kitchen table,
her half-cup of coffee gone cold.

What about the one that begins
In a diner? That ends on the bus?
One that rhymes? One that doesn’t?

Tell me if you’ve head the one
in which somebody learns to swim
or ride a bike or turns down

good money at a bad job,
if you know the one quoting Lorca
or Julian of Norwich.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one,
with its tale of looking into the eyes
of some creature in the wild,

coyote or fox or eight-point buck,
if you’ve heard how
all of them walk into a poem

just in time for the punch line.

Before I swung the croquet mallet
I thought: Don’t look up.
As I swung, I looked up to where

I wanted my ball to go and watched it
go somewhere else. Don’t look up.
Don’t look up, I growled at myself

as my playing partner called out,
You looked up. Next shot, I
kept my eyes on where I wanted

my mallet to meet my ball.
The ball shot ahead to where
I hadn’t been looking and hit

my opponent’s ball, just as
I’d intended. Don’t look up. Don’t
look up, I repeated, knowing

that I’d soon forget, look up
as if I could see the future
that was nothing like I hoped.

around corners and over little bumps
and, with a great heave, up the ramp
to the door of the room where

the doctor would enter my body,
and they asked if I had any questions.
I said, “One,” and asked if I should

go to the bathroom to urinate, and,
while it was not audible, there surely
was a collective exasperated sigh,

and they rolled me back down the ramp
and down the corridor and around a corner
and let me get up to go to the bathroom

before rolling me again around a corner
and down the hall and, again with a
great heave, up the ramp to the door

of the room in which in a little while
any unasked questions I might have
would be answered.

Early morning coffee shop sunrise
“good morning dad” greeting
from daughter of marriage long ago
estranged by separation
bitterness of divorce
parental connection in doubt
instead of rolling eyes
looking sideways in shadows
suggesting immediate dna test
graybeard poet always a gentleman
with warm smile
saying hello robin
let’s hear about your life

Who trapped a wasp in my Lone Ranger
lunch box? Who slipped the class treasury out
from under my desk? Who stole the girl

I loved in college, bought her a five-bedroom
Tudor in Bel Air, snatched two daughters
from between the pretty thighs I thought

were mine, and has out-earned me
every year of his perfidious life? Who,
when the last NEA fellowship teetered

between him and me, had a pantoum
about his mother’s lilac-flowered gravy
boat, and the judge’s sainted mother

owned a lilac-flowered gravy boat?
Who, in a white sedan, phone at his ear,
hung a left that could have killed me

if I hadn’t gunned my brand-new CR-V,
though the white car clipped my rear
(2K to fix), then fled down Montrose, free.
Who, my wife and I conked out in bed,
walks the Hound of the Baskervilles
past our yard, where it deposits, every

night, a pound of processed Purina
stacked like Lincoln Logs? Who
grabbed the last on-sale Beautyrest,

forcing us to sleep ugly? Who shadows
me to this day, hooting, “Watch
out—you’re blowing it,” dropping nut

shells, mango rinds, and coarse red
hairs that clog our bathroom sink,
for which my wife blames me?

He guards the sidewalk where Wilton Street
T-bones Wiltshire, bawling at all
who dare come near, “Watch where you tromp.

The New Testament’s wrote here!”
When three guys saunter up, bouncing
a basketball, he roars, “Run, sinners!

Devil’s stuffed fear-fish in your beer.
Breathe deep. God hates breath-slackers,”
he confides when, on the grass, I sidle by.

A month before, he’d hissed, “Keep this.
It’s a Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free,”
then thrust a receipt for a corn-dog at me.

“Thanks to the ranks,” he growled
as I gave him a buck. I know it’s nuts,
but I keep that receipt.

“Just think—if the air had a different composition,
We’d all die. Merciful God be praised,” Yvonne,

the cheerful and, frankly, gorgeous Pentecostal mom
of a boy on my son’s baseball team tells me.

Clutching a book called God’s Glorious Plan for YOU,
she pulls her sweatshirt off one slim shoulder

to show her new tattoo—not Born to Kill or 24-Karat
Hot T, but white lilies and yellow daffodils wreathing

an ornate Jesus loves you. And yet the way she undulates
her shoulder looks to me like heathen flirting.

I don’t mind, Lord knows, and understand completely
her wish for a loving God with a Glorious Plan.

Nobody wants to be a gum wrapper whipped
and whapped in Chance’s hurricane. The faith that shines

in those blue eyes makes me unwilling, anyway,
to deploy logic in her vicinity. I offer up, instead,

the pious look I learned in Sunday School. Yvonne,
be of good cheer. I shout Hosannahs to your God,

or Whatever created Eve, who looked, I’m guessing,
very much like you.

Find 1 + 1 before e = mc². Stand before you walk.
Walk before you run. Cry before you tantrum.

Draw the apple. Draw the pear. Practice scales.
Do the dull stuff; the gleam is trapped in there.

Hit off the tee. Block ten thousand grounders
with your shins and knees. Flail your whip-tail

night and day. Swim on and on when others fail.
You think spermhood’s all squirmy fun?—

think Ali rope-a-doped his way out of the womb?
Relax your gimboid if you want to floom.

Ungreabe your squag. Pick up the cat’s plate
full of ants, and wave it hard. The ants that fall off

won’t go far. You’ve got to schlep through endless
seas to reach the Indies—slog across hot

sand to reach the Land of Promises which may
be kept, or not.

Threads of gold peering
through the blinds
lure me to the balcony
past my daughter’s seraphim face.
I could pinch Notre Dame’s steeple.
St. Germaine hums six flights below,
the corner Metro station
linking lovers and artists.
I try to steady the beauty,
grasp the iron railing,
inhale the spring air—lost
like a whole generation.