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When we stopped at the top
for other passengers to climb aboard,
Mom and I sat huddled in the red bucket
Overlooking the boardwalk,
the blue Atlantic rolling across the sand,
the air pungent with salt and suntan lotion
and dough in the deep fryers.
Slowly rocking as in a cradle,
the faint, piped melody from the merry-go-round
ran through me like a lullaby
with my head nestled in the crook
of my mother’s arm and chest.
Cotton candy clouds seemed mine for the taking.
The sun on my legs was a warm hand.
My sneakers dangled, defying air.

When the wheel moved downward,
Mom pulled away, gathering her hat and bag.
I peered over the metal bar at the line
waiting for a ride.
Eager faces of other children looked up
while holding an adult hand.
I felt their anticipation,
wished them all a long stop at the top.

He asked me to aim up
on a crisp October night
to see the craters on the harvest moon.
I scanned the sky until the bight edge
appeared in the lens,
roving the mysterious surface
back and forth,
dark spots taking shape and dimension,
the moon becoming real.

My father’s been gone 20 years now.
His binoculars sit on a shelf by my back door
to catch a butterfly in flight
or a fawn in the woods.
Sometimes I still gaze at the moon.
I remember his large hands over mine
each time I twist the world into focus,
childhood refracted in the crystals.

The air smells of soap
and electricity.
Decisions are like the clicking of quarters
already made.

When my clothes come out warm,
I lay my face a moment in them—
a borrowed comfort.
Even clean things, it seems,
remember where they’ve been.

The clock resumes
its small insistence.
The refrigerator hums—
a sound that means
nothing is wrong.

I look at my hands,
still holding the shape
of the phone,
as if touch leaves an echo.

Whatever was said
has settled now—
not as words
but as weight,
evenly distributed.

Don’t take No for an answer.
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.
Never say die.

Don’t give up your day job.
Don’t cry over spilled milk.
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Don’t get mad, get even.
Don’t let the grass grow under your feet.
Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
Never say never.

A thick hide sleeve covers Marco’s arm, the one that faces
the furnace maw. He holds a long hollow pipe, soft glass
wad at the end, and thrusts it fast into the fire, exhales
slowly, twirls the pipe for symmetry; a blue vase
is born, silica and brimstone. Acrid air fills torrid
room. The vase comes alive, sings at its birth.
His other hand holds shears, then the wooden
paddle that shapes the vase. He plunges the orb
in a bucket of ice water, pushes it back to the heat,
to a new icy bath where sulfate and silver crackle, lighten
bright blue to sunlit sea. Marco’s father taught him to blow
glass when he was seven, like grandfather and great-grand
before that, words forever in his mind: solid glass is the rod,
molten glass is the gather, graphite tools keep the mass
together. At just the right time he flares the open edge;
it takes time to learn each moment, or discard and
begin anew, to imagine how long to blow, know
when to stop. The heat erased his fingerprints
years ago. Tradition takes him to work daily.
His face, tanned by furnaces; the wild fire
of his life gives him status. In Murano
all the isles connect with bridges.
Making glass connects Marco
to his solid glass island.

money always
talks.

inside this bottle
because I thought

there was a ship
in here, because I

thought you
might be on it.

say, making
ends meet.

ness we
could carry

only
so far.

I was a first-pitch taker,
weighing and waiting,
but this one came in fat
and straight, just off
the middle of the plate,
in my wheelhouse,
and that day of all days
I didn’t think about it,
just swung with all I had.
I felt the satisfying jolt
from my wrists to the root
of my groin, and the ball
shot off in an arc
I knew would carry.
As I sprinted into second
the ball bounced
onto the tennis courts,
and the outfielders
pulled up from their chase.
John at third put up
his hands to slow me
down, and when I
caught up to him
we trotted the rest
of the way home
to meet the team
in one transcendent
mosh pit of joy (though
we wouldn’t have
used the word joy then,
much less transcendent).

I don’t even remember
if we won the game,
but every once in a while
in these low times
I rewind that day
to remind myself
that I did something
once, something
as close to perfect
as I was likely to get,
but also this:
that the past is past,
and every at-bat
starts with no balls
and no strikes.

Barges and gondolas are setting out
across the water for the last time today
with their cargo and vague shapes of men
as the moon rises in one blue corner
and the sun, spilling copper and citron,
sinks behind you. Draw nearer
to the city of stone and gold,
suspended in mist,
beguiling from a distance,
your unattainable islands.

and my father leans out the window,
flicks the ash from his cigarette: Going somewhere?
and my mother opens the door
and smiles, there’s plenty of room,
she says, hop in, so I do.

Kratisiklia is reassuring her son Kleomenes,
the last great king of Syria, that she,
proud to be of service to the state,
would willingly go to Egypt as a hostage
with her young grandsons to secure the alliance

against Macedon. Royalty knows how to bear
the turn of circumstance without complaint.
In Alexandria, after another disastrous war,
the whole family would be eradicated
and that would be the end of Sparta

as they had known it. Characters
from third century intrigues,
obscure and irrelevant, except perhaps
to one living in a suburb of the capital,
adrift on the periphery of its splendor.

after the last dance at midnight
when the laughter in the kitchen

has died down
and the short-order cook

at the corner diner
has called it a night

there’s the long walk home
through driving snow

with a stop in Hell’s Kitchen
to light up a cigarette

under the awning
of the Korean grocery

by a kiosk selling papers
telling of last year’s news.

A new year—

The ambivalent heart wavers
between hope and despair
as it always has
year after year
after year.

Will the same resolutions
be made again
the vows to be good
to behave the way
you know you should

will they be kept
or will they be swept
away by the waters
of winter’s melting snow.

And what of the wider world
that broken world of pain and suffering
that scrolls across your TV screen

will you look away
will you hope and pray
that generations to come
will save the day

for after all
what can you do
in the ninth decade of life
feeling the weight of years.

You look out
into the darkness and
in the hush of night

you hear a saxophone—

The music floats out
over the gray buildings
suffusing the silent night air with song
and for a moment
the speed of time is stilled
and the shuttered heart
slowly opens.

Not so much a snore as a purr,
Sarah sleeping, with light

through the blinds
streaking her silvery hair.

The rhythm of the surf,
an occasional squawk

of a gull, the low moan
of a ship far off.

It’s late October.
No one else is staying

at this seaside inn.
Our only plan is

to stroll on the beach
whenever we are ready,

collect sand dollars,
maybe edge ankle-deep

into the icy ocean
for a moment.

The first car of the morning
passes by,

muffler clanking.
I can’t imagine

where it’s been
or where it has to go.

When Sarah shows signs
of waking I’ll set

the coffee brewing
but she’s just rolled over

to face a beam of sun,
hands pressed palm-to-palm

between her cheek
and the flowered pillow.

my hometown
with the radio tuned
to a station that once

was mainstream rock
but now plays country
with whines of one-

night stands turned bad
& Jesus. All the windows
in the paper mill are busted,

the roof sunken. Swanson’s
block-long department store
is gone, the building razed

and replaced with knock-off
fast food joints. I speed past
the Neponset River, where

my father schooled me
on catch & release, then slow
as I near the intersection

of Main & Oak. A right
turn leads eventually
to the interstate,

left is a straight shot
to the cemetery.

When Isabel passes, the nonchalant niece in St.
Louis lets things go.  Weeds take over Isabel’s
lawn.  Every day, it seems, there are more.  What
about property values?  Gloria points out
bluegrass and ox tongue.  Says they can stay but
chickweed and thistle have to go.  We meet with
gloves and trowels.  We work on our knees, then
help each other up.  We read seed catalogs and
start composting.  Tommy brings lemonade.
Music makes its way out of Joaquin’s west
window.  Nicky’s dog laps water in 4/4 time. A
gardener leaves his card, but we don’t want a
noisy gardener because of the House Finch,
Anna’s Hummingbird, Dark-eyed Junco and now
and then among all that plumage a Northern
Cardinal like one drop of blood in a mystery
series.

“Show me some identification:  Driver’s license,
student I.D., dog tags.  Debit card, credit card.
Pedigree.  Chai-dentity.  Blank check.  Phone bill.
Passport.  Permanent resident card.  Employee
I.D. is fine.  Native American tribal document.
Social security card?  Certification of birth abroad.
Anything.  Keep Looking.  Sales receipt, full or
simplified invoice, tax return, health insurance
card, rewards card from CVS, voter I.D., flight
crew I.D., union membership card, marriage
certificate, rental agreement, gym membership,
car insurance, bank statement, newspaper article
with your name and picture, letter addressed
to you, or postcard or… You’ve got what? Why
didn’t you say so?  Show me your phone then. So
this is you, Rodolpho.  And your dog..What’s his
name?”

Well, she didn’t.  Four crowded lanes at all hours.
No savvy fowl would even consider the other side
as an option if it weren’t for the farmer’s
bloodthirsty wife.  The chicken knows that in 1793
thousands were beheaded.  Yet ten months later
the Reign of Terror ended with the death of
Robespierre.  A barnyard isn’t the same as 18^th
Century France, but there are similarities.  The
chicken decides to return to the hen house with
its small library of history books.  More study may
be necessary.

You kiss her
hard and she smells like sweat
and peanut butter
and you can barely open
your eyes, try not to slip
with the knife.
You scrape strawberry slices
into a bowl and
the baby screams. She runs
to him—
a gentle pat on the head,
There, there,
Shhh.

You try to be a mom
that can whip up tight,
neat braids
in a time crunch,
no fly aways.
Instead, you are reckless
with the spray bottle,
soaking her neck more
than her hair.
Her pigtails come out
lopsided no matter how many times
you redo them.

You remind her to eat her strawberries
but she is too busy dancing.
She closes her eyes
and twirls.

The pens came in soft pastels and on them
were sayings like
You’re awesome, You can do this
and other generic affirmations
that felt less like clichés
and more like your antidepressants
were finally working.

The smooth black ink never smudged
and made you want
to write your own name over and over.

I stare at the spot
in the pen section where yours should be
and wonder if I miss you the right amount,
they’ll suddenly appear.
I’d wrap them up in a perfect package,
mail them to you, no letter, no return address
so you can pretend you don’t know
who sent them.

I would buy a pack for myself,
write my name next to yours on new stationery,
imagine we kept
our no matter what promise—
and maybe
If we stay on paper—unmoving, but always searching.

I trace the veins on my hand,
remember they are blue lies.
Eyes can’t process
what’s inside of me.
Blood is real only when
we feel its stickiness, taste and small copper,
hear a ringing as the world splits

in half, body dizzy from loss.
I want to touch the moon,
hear her secrets and keep them.
I want to know her true color,
even if color is just a feeling,
a primal pull,

making me look up.

We did this,
chipped away
at the bones of beauty,
the earth, the seas,
leaving the sun, the moon
alone in the sky
with no one
to shine on.

without need
of battery or plug—

and admire this one
woven in farm country

for apples or potatoes
bless its heart

heart being what helps a thing
to age with grace.

Long used as interior decoration
its ribs stiffen

yet each remains straight
and neatly in place

the braided trim
still a sign of weaver’s pride.

While lit screen and lamp
can light this room
the basket is what warms it—
bowl empty

ready to receive and carry
when it comes
whatever is given.

White wicker. Painted gingerbread. Palm
fronds curving early shadows where I

sit shaping poems. This balcony takes me
towards wide sky where a slow hawk hopes

for chickens. Sloping roofs of weathered
metal protect long windows and doors,

a porch hung with a hundred crystals
that glitter in air’s sway. Who am I

to shape a home so southward
of my fears? I wear a turquoise

cotton skirt, loose-woven rainbow slippers:
Do More of What Makes You Happy

the words across my new soft shirt
dark pink as drifts of bougainvillea

petals falling on Fleming Street.

It was the end of something
and also a beginning,
though we couldn’t see
beyond our shock what else
was falling, what else
went up in smoke.

This is the morning after,
the clear blue sky full of regret.
What could we have done
differently? What should we not
have done? What can we do now?
The questions hang in the morning air.

Today the beauty of the light
evokes an ache of nostalgia
for the innocent time before,
when a blue sky didn’t feel ominous
and there seemed to be a path
forward, however much
we stumbled on our way.

They speak with charred tongues,
the jagged roofless walls
like broken teeth in a mouth
howling to the sky.

All the men lined up
and shot by German boys,
their women and children
locked in the church

and burned alive by a grenade
tossed in to quash resistance
as the soldiers pushed north
toward Normandy,

setting the town on fire
as they left. We walk
the empty streets, reading
the signs on wrecked walls:

Dentist. Pharmacie. Café.
Garage. Forgerons.
Behind glassless windows
rusty blacksmith’s tools
at the abandoned forge,
a rusty hulk of a car
that will never be repaired.

The grass is green now,
the weeds have thrived.
Birds fill the air
with song, unmindful
of the echo of distant

bombs falling in Gaza
and Ukraine, the centuries
of spears and swords,
cannons and guns.

We walk the streets
peopled by ghosts,
mourning the past,
the future, the lessons
of history unlearned.

In the laundromat across the street,
two plastic stacking chairs
sit side by side in the window
through which I watch
in the store’s white light
a pale pair of legs—
blue gym shorts
descending to mid-thigh,
feet in neon green crocs—
carry a basketless bundle of laundry
from a washer on the left
to a dryer on the right.

A man wearing a fedora,
holding a phone against his left ear,
right arm raised in what
from up here on the sixth floor
looks like frustration,
steps from the street
into the chair on the left,
pointing as he does so
to where those legs
must have walked to
in the back of the store.

Then, the phone still against his ear,
right hand gesticulating
as if conducting an orchestra
that will not heed his cues,
he leaves, heading west
on Northern Boulevard.
Just as he crosses the line
where the street lamp’s light ends,
the lamp itself, as it has done
twice already since I’ve been sitting here,
goes dark, leaving
Vista Dental’s neon marquee
to bathe the sidewalk once again
in a smoke-filled-blues-bar blue
that takes me back to 11th grade.

“You’re not like these religious boys,”
Mrs. Lynch waved her hand around the room
as if my classmates were seated at their desks.
“Ten years from now,
I see you playing blues piano
In a bar on Bleecker Street.
Who knows where they will be?”

It wasn’t the blues,
and it was less than a decade later,
but for one night in my twenties,
Judy Lynch wasn’t wrong.
Bill sang the song we wrote,
his words, my music,
and I wish I could say I thought of her
as my hands moved across the keys
on stage at The Bitter End,
but that would be a lie.

I don’t remember what I thought,
except I didn’t want to end
with the whole step Bill insisted
made the melody complete,
and I have often wondered since
if the minor second I played instead
Is where the dissonance we walked away from
when our friendship ended
began. I wish I could ask him,
but I don’t know where Bill is.

The legs in the laundromat reappear,
turn towards the front door,
and the woman whose dark shape
I can now make out through the glass
turns the key in its lock.
Looking right, then left, then right again,
she tilts her head up,
lifting what would be her gaze
if I could see her eyes
into my line of sight,
and for half a breath,
I’m sure she sees me,
and I wonder,
if I wave to her,
will she wave back?

More flows through.

It all feels looser,
with holes.

“Evil has a blockbuster audience,
            goodness lurks backstage.”
Toni Morrison

goodness I say
if mildly surprised
but it is not my intention here
what is goodness truly
what does it mean to have goodness
is it simply doing the right thing
every time but who can do that
when I see goodness
will I recognize it
my image of goodness
is my mom working
for most of her life
as a mother and waitress
seeing her telling a hungry
stranger order anything
on the menu and then
taking care of the bill herself

more than 60% of customers
are buying indica or CBD
for sleep, no THC highs desired.
Most of us chew gummies because

in old age sleep is elusive,
captious like a playful dog who
runs from you wanting to be
chased. Weed is sticky, grabs

and holds sleep in my body.
Praise that plant with many names.
I wake blessing you for your gift
that heals me nightly.

She is accompanied
by a yearling and a faun.
They nibble as they walk.
They’re hungry for what-

ever the land still offers.
Harvest is in, processed.
Freezer full. Shelves hold
jars of canned tomatoes.

You’re welcome to what’s
left, beautiful neighbors.
Summer people are gone,
these woods are now yours.

“Get an office job, bring home
a paycheck.” I left at seventeen,
was poor almost a decade.
Made money as a writer at last.

“Your mouth is too big. You’re
ugly.” I was the ugly duckling. Then
a black swan for years. Husband
still thinks I’m beautiful.

“A woman needs a husband
to survive.” I mostly supported
every one of them, always
the breadwinner after 30.

I made my own way, in spite
of her probing, doom forecasts.
Her advice was for another era,
another woman, but not me.

when she introduced her fellow panelists that night,
the family huddled around the Motorola.
Hal Simms, the announcer, welcomed us,
then praised the sponsor, Sunbeam Electric Appliances

Two mystery guests entertained us that night,
for whom the panelists all put on their masks.
Gray hair long like a Dave Clark Five musician,
I would reflect a few years later,
at the start of the show, Sandberg signed in.

“Who’s that?” I asked my parents.
I knew who the next mystery guest was,
Milton Berle, but this man was unfamiliar to me.
But my parents shushed me,
As if we were sitting in a movie theater.

After four incorrect answers,
but confirming the mystery guest was a writer,
Nick Adams, one of the panelists—
he starred in the TV series The Rebel—
asked if he was Ernest Hemingway.
Speaking in a monosyllabic falsetto,
Sandburg said, “Nope.”

Arlene Francis then asked
If he was “a great historian of Lincoln,”
and when he said again, in falsetto,
“You’re simply terrible!”
Arlene announced triumphantly,
“It’s the glorious Carl Sandburg!”

As he was about to leave his seat, to exit the stage,
Sandburg asked Daly if he might predict
who would win the upcoming election.
The date was September 11, 1960.
The poet confided with a smile,
“The winner will have a luxuriant head of hair.”

“Is he running for president?” I asked,
innocent eight-year-old that I was.

The original theme, “Melody in Moccasins,”
composed by Wilfred Burns, felt like
something heralding the computer age;
you could see reams of code spilling out
of big IBM printers, as mainframes churned
in empty, fluorescent-lit rooms,
virtually screaming, Brainy!

But the second, arranged by Eddie Sauter and Bill Finnegan,

a musical composition originally written for Arpege perfumes
by the famous jingle writer Sascha Burland,
felt just like the perfect background
for Dorothy Kilgallen to come waltzing
from behind the curtain in a shoulderless gown,
take her seat at the panel, introduce the next panelist,
followed by Arlene Francis, a string of pearls
swaying in rhythm with her hips,
a sound that promised something sophisticated,
an atmosphere of alcoholic abandon,
and behold, bowtied Bennett Cerf,
smiling like a man holding a martini,
comes through the curtain and takes his seat
before introducing the moderator, John Charles Daly.
Maybe it was the horn section
that made it all seem so ballroom-y big.

You’ve just got to hear these theme songs
to understand what I’m getting at.
Maybe they’re on YouTube.

In the usual course of play,
each panelist asked questions until
he or she got a negative response,
then the next panelist took a turn,
the guest having racked up five bucks.

With the mystery guest, the rules changed:
Each panelist asked one question
before the next got a turn.

We sat on the edge of the couch
watching the masked panelists,
four blind mice, fumble for answers.
What a joy the night Art Carney signed in,
the voices he used to disguise himself.
I remember it prompted Arlene Francis to ask,
“You are a comedian, aren’t you?”

And Carney responded in the high cartoon voice,
“Sometimes. Sometimes I can make people cry.”

How we howled back home in Potawatomi Rapids,
all of us staring at the black and white TV,
as if huddled before a campfire—
Mom, Pop, Dave, Bob, and me;
I’m the last of us still living.

We’re waiting for him to come down
the mobile lounge they hooked onto
the plane sitting in the sun
waiting for us to be fed the calm
letting the wet in our armpits dry.

We can’t share the news or info he has
nor will we get what he doesn’t know
each time reporters ask
their aggravating questions
dressed as the solution to an equation.

We dance around as he descends
into the culture of ignorance
like a nervous pig in Animal Farm
coming back from bargaining
some dangerous ordinance for peace.

On our side of the table we can’t tell
if he keeps his face hard, jaw closed
whether something’s been left behind
other than the enemy’s invitation—
while Death sits outside in mourning.

having to go there: the starched heavy gi’s
we wore, the lack of air conditioning,
front door propped open to the car-choked street,
ceiling fan stilled in the absence of breeze.

And the board mounted high on the wall, listing
in Japanese the various throws and sweeps,
phonetic pronunciations in English,
none of which could I make out, my glasses

folded like a butterfly in a sneaker
left near the door. The dojo was managed
by a redneck from Alabama, who hired
young men new to America, our teachers

born in the shadows of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki who spoke no English
and on a small hot plate heated sake
and bouillon in a dingy back room, steam

hanging in clouds. What I learned was mostly how
to fall, embracing it, my hand slapping
the mat emphatically, then bouncing right
back up—and bowing, a lot of bowing.

Not once did I enter a tournament
and our instructors received their green cards
long before I finally made green belt.
Years passed, my attendance seemed permanent

and if I grew stronger it was only thanks
to growing older. Until the neighbors’ boy
one day mocked my little brother and shoved him
face down. I grabbed the kid and, without thinking,

hurled him probably ten feet through the air
with a throw whose name I still didn’t know.
He screamed and ran off, only his pride hurt.
But my parents decided then and there

that all the lessons had been money well spent
and I didn’t need to go anymore.
By now I’ve forgotten almost all of it
but I still know how to fall—not if but when

time, as it must, knocks me to the ground, and laughs.

Folks scurry by in goofy garb
As if they’re coming from a funny farm
In baggy pants, split skirts, and Bucs T-shirts,
Or dazzling floral prints, with flip-flops on their feet.

Good morning. Beautiful day, isn’t it?
Love your work! Where’s that at?
Mont St. Michel—in France.
Oh, don’t you just LOVE Paris!

Do you care for this one, Dear?
A tall man points to a wildlife scene.
Too much blue, his wife says dismissively.
It’s won’t go with our new wallpaper.

A parade of folks in every shape and size
Sidle past—some with kids and some with dogs.
Most stand three feet from entryways,
Fearing, I guess, they might disturb the art.

Some give a quick sweep around the walls,
Sheepishly turning away, averting their eyes.
Most walk by with scarce a glance
As if they’re heading for a special task.

How much is this one? A gray-haired woman asks.
You think that’d look good above
The couch in the living room, Horace?
A grumpy growl is proffered in response.

Is that a watercolor?
I just love watercolors! Can’t do ‘em myself.
Actually, I can’t draw a straight line.
But my sister’s a real good artist…and so’s my son.

Most visitors make quick work
Of every art display
And rush in search of holiday crafts
To give at Christmas time.

He’s been testing you
for everything,
applying the pin-pricks
of conscience.

You want him to treat
all your rash
decisions, stings
of regret, this haze

of speculation
filling your head.
Charts on the wall
show more philosophy

than you dreamed of,
an -ology or- ism
for whatever has been
ailing you. All you need

is a little something
to save your mind’s eye
its watering, your soul
its constant itch.

Despite all the lily pads crowding
shoulder to rounded shoulder
across the would-be mirror of the pond’s surface,

and even though a few lilies look ready
to unfold, pink or yellow,
each bulbous as a little balloon,

I’m not reminded of Monet and his impressions.
nor do I think of the Buddha,
these flat green pads so lotus-like

and blossoming as if to sprout another world.
What comes to mind in this stillness
is how the woman who lived here fifty years

described the heron swallowing
the last of her koi, how she watched
what seemed like a knot working down

the slow rope of that throat
before the tall bird climbed back
into its wide, unreflected element.

It seemed a more pressing question
than the sound of one hand
clapping, our slow, silent gestures
pushing against the musty air
of study hall, each of us ready
to step from the measured path

of Western Thought for a while,
eager for koans dense and heady
as magic mushrooms picked
from some forest floor, enlightenment
inviting us to its buzzy party,
no homework due till Monday.

She said. Peaches. Then she died. Only after the house
sold and her son was clearing it out did we learn
what her last words were about. On a high shelf
In the pantry were jars of peaches she’d put up years ago,
the peaches she’d been reaching for that day.

table for two basement bistro
spaghetti dinner with chianti
long loaf of garlic bread
candle in empty wicker bottle
providing romantic light
bobby short playing piano
familiar cole love songs
dark café shadows
having friendly conversation
with beautiful dark-haired girl
enjoying pleasant ambience
anticipating late night passion

Windows open. Snowdrops up. Lags bare. Spring!
She wants her hands in dirt. No armchair spring.

Grandpa remembers Yiddish proverbs, his
first-grade teacher’s name. Not “car,” “pear,” “spring.”

Some beast chomped my plants to stubs. The neighbors’
garden glutted with buds. I want their spring.

Zoom instead of visits. Even in dreams
I’m masked. Another me here/you there spring.

I know your tricks—using beauty to tempt
frozen hearts to open. Don’t you dare, Spring!

Ghost-pallored, maker of ghosts, Chauvin sits
unremorseful in the witness chair. Spring

of justice, season of whites waking up?
Or yet another life-isn’t-fair spring?

Coats and thick pants packed away. Warm air means
less clothing. Women exist. Men stare. Spring

of desire wound. Circling hawks. Ducks bob
on the light-kissed river. Jays declare, Spring.

The sky’s ferocious blue. Sun-dappled stone.
Trees tell stories of rebirth, repair. Spring.

–after Stanley Plumly’s
       “The Iron Lung”

The boy whose father is a major league
baseball player, a journeyman who can field

almost every position, lives around the block
from us, his right hand always hidden

by a mitt signed by his dad’s teammates.
If I had one of those, I’d never take it off,

even in the bath forced upon me by mother
who might swat my rump if I refuse

bubbles and dirty water. As it turns out,
Bobby Jr., that boy, will not be back

next year, his father traded or sent down
to the minors. I was too stunned for the news

to take hold in my pre-teen brain. How
can the world shift so suddenly as if

elevator cables were cut/snipped free
and down we go to basement level

whether that was our destination or not?
The boy starts to wander alleyways,

memorizing trash can placements, backboards
hammered to garages, clumps of weeds

winding up chainlink fences. He says
these walks and objects calm him, which sounds

Crazy to me, and he does not want company,
so I drift off home, and tune in

to an old cowboy serial, a shoot-em-up
in which good guys are always left standing.

When I get amped up enough to stretch my legs, I go
for a walk in the mountains, power along a trail,
or so I thought until the other day I came upon high
wires strung between tall towers in a long line carved
through the forest and realized that I can’t hold a candle
to the light they bring to millions. So watt! I stopped
and squatted on a boulder, placed my hands together
against my chest and bowed down, chanting slowly…
ohm…ohm…offering no resistance to letting my
spirit float into the blue. I stood, continued my journey,
passed beneath one of those massive towers, metal
girders reaching skyward towards the ultimate power
on high. Suddenly she spoke: “Jim, lacking a strong
volta, you should transform this into a ghazal.”

The power on high spat on your form, implored you to try
to compose those lines differently, and thus you must try.

But trust yourself, Jim, to run free. Let go the constraints
of meter, rhyme, and repetition. You must keep on trying.

Time after time, the math man in you aligns with fourteen,
two and seven both prime. With numbers, keep on trying.

And yet—a river courses through your brain. You cannot
defy the urge to surge—you must channel it. Keep trying.

Same old refrain—too much resistance for you to retreat.
no goddess can chart your way. You must keep on trying.

Such a strain! Heart/mind –try as you might, you can’t win
the fight to leave one behind. Is there any point in trying?
So, Jim, redeem yourself. Ignore her request. You do know
the sonnet well. Yes, you do them best, hardly even trying.

“Aarr! Aarr!” they call, the black flags
of their wings flapping around a pine that looms
like the mast of a galleon in the fog. “Avast,
me hearties. Dead men tell no tales. “Aarr! Aarr!”

My barber’s son dropped out of Trade Tech
to play a pirate at parties, and guitar
on weekends with the Crow-Barred Scrotes.
Pirates sunburnt shiny black as crows

board oil-tankers big as Monaco. Sometimes
they’re shot; sometimes they score millions
in ransom, or trials in the U.S., where lawyers
fight like crows over a rat the cat threw up.

“Aarr! I get the head and feet.” “Aarr!
Says who, Matey?” “Aarr!” the world roars
on International Talk Like a Pirate Day,
which honors Long John Silver, in whose dialect,

every sentence, inspired by the black rooks
of Cornwall, starts that way. Long John’s
Brittannia punished pirates—hanging,
drawing, quartering, then re-hanging the tarred

corpses to be pecked apart by crows.
They did this partly to scare off Henry
Morgan wanna-bes, partly for show.
In the Civil War, mobs sporting Sunday best

massed like cows on grassy hills to watch
reels try to sink the Ship of State.
Crows (naturally) despise conventional beauty.
“Damn yer eyes, Bluebird,” they rail.

As paramedics rushed my dad—in youth,
a duck-tailed brigand—on his last, heart-
stopping race to the ER, crows sang out,
“The Cap’n goes down with his ship! Aarr! Aarr!”

It shifts cramped legs, pecks stomach walls with
its sharp beak, then breaks out, squawking.
Trapped, it gnaws off its own paw, eats it, then
limps into its den to growl and grumble and
grow huge.

Its army rumbles into town—friends if there’s
food, fiends if there’s not.
The more you pray that it will sleep through the
night, the more it wakes, red-faced, squalling.

As soon as doctors find a cure, hunger evolves a
new strain, deadlier than before. “To each
according to what he can grab, from each
according to what he’s too weak to keep,”
Judge Hunger rules.

“Blessed is a big meal and a healthy appetite,”
Jesus said. “Blessed are fat shepherds and
tasty sheep,” the Church replied.

heel of her least accomplishment? Face it, you
who quipped, “Happy intellectual’s an
oxymoron.”
You’re the moron, whining, “The tax code is four
times as long as Shakespeare’s complete works.”
The lawyers who wrote that code are ten times
happier than you. They make ten times more

money, and if someone screws them, they know
what to do. They can enjoy a Rams game
or Lady Gaga show, while you squat
in your private box far from The Norm, proud
that the ruck never gets the things you love.
Where does that get you? Into bed alone,

pretending your wounds taste like marmalade.
The high point of your life is still the rainy day
you played Galveston Picnic with your mom,
using socks for fish, and colored beads for shells.
Watching Dracula at Oaks Drive-In, licking
Hershey’s chocolate off Linda’s lips, then settling

down in the back seat—that didn’t take a big
IQ. Yet you think people should say,
“You’re smarter. We’ll do it your way.” As if you
didn’t say in 8th grade, “Hamlet’s over-hyped,”
didn’t join Mensa in LA, hoping to meet genius
directors and brainy, sexpot actresses. What

has smart gotten you? A moment’s pride
on opening your SATs? Another for your full
ride to Ivy U.? And a good job; it helped with that.
But some people have better jobs; so you scowl
and mope—Genius Unrecognized—and think
the world gives a flying bratwurst what you do.

a white elephant on my chest?
forehead streaming lava
fingers tingle ice
dizzy, I drop to the unswept
hardwood floor, lie down to study
the ceiling—at least if I faint
i have nowhere to fall
patrons unfazed, no one asks
are you all right? are you all right?

just keep breathing
i don’t have an ice cube for my neck
just this lukewarm bottle of water
scouring for your perfect birthday gift
in these 18 miles of books
the volume of shakespeare & co. paris poetry
out of stock outofstock
i might never see you again
meet you in midtown for coffee
separated by continents
keep breathing
separated by semicolons
it’s raining semicolons in here
they’re not as pretty as eighth notes
i forgot an umbrella
my blouse drenched
my back is so wet
our story isn’t over
just breathe
i need to deliver this paperback
of lahiri stories
she read in our hometown
at kleinhans music hall
so you can read them on an airplane
and think of me

ever I found myself

in a bind
(many binds ago)

i knelt
by the side of my bunk

to pray:
loudly, madly, selfishly.

at my lowest, and,
down on the cold stone floor,

a blast of light
flashed over my face.

for a moment

i thought it God,
but there was only a Guard

laughing
as he passed by the cell door.

19,340 feet to freedom—
This is our Mount Everest.
This is our Kilimanjaro.
There is no Kibo to reach for,
No empyrean view at the top.
There is only
The idolum of own imaginings.
Followed by
Another Everest,
Another Kilimanjaro.
Oh,
And there is barbed wire too.

Before you came, one of the guys at the factory
where you work, a beefy, mean-looking guy with
fists like sledgehammers, asked in a sneering way
what you were going to do while you were in
Miami, lay on the beach and get a tan?

“I’m going to sit in my mom’s kitchen and talk.”
You were embarrassed to say this, sounded like
such a boring thing to fly clear across the country
to do.

He looked straight into you, his face gone all soft,
and said, almost whispering, “I’d give anything to
sit with my mother in her kitchen again.” Then he
shook his head like he was trying to make what
he’d just said disappear, and stomped off.

You remember his words while you are laughing
with your mother and try to relish the moment,
hold onto it. But it passes too quickly, and you
forget all about it until you are the one wishing
you could sit in your mother’s kitchen again.