Une pomme meurtri

 

Une pomme meurtri

Message from a stranger on Facebook. Says he had Mlle K for Beginner French. Says we should talk.

We meet at an outdoor table, coffee shop.

She mentioned you, he says first.
Okay, I say, cautious.
Look, he says. I know and you know.

How did she mention me? I ask.
Fondly, he says. That you were so quiet.
Yeah, I say.

I bet you were a shy brainy virgin, he says. And socially incompetent—like me. Right?

Yeah, I say. Still am, I say.
We chuckle.

Mlle K, he says, was never a knockout. It was really awkward but also kind of great, like a fantasy. So you know, right, the suicide?

No! I say. When? I ask.
June, he says.
You think they found out? I ask.
Maybe, he says.

You tell anybody? he asks.
No, I say. She was, like, Absolument jamais!

My wife, he says.
Not mine, I say.

I don’t feel damaged, he says, but my wife says if I don’t feel damaged how come I never told anybody? You’d think I’d brag about it.

I liked her, I say. She made me feel special but also kind of sad.

She was, um, educational, he says. But at the same time I felt sorry for her. Not that I said no to anything.

Yeah, I say.  

Like a bruised apple, he says.
Sweet, but parts you avoid.

I’ve got kids, I say.
Me too, he says.
I wouldn’t want— I say.
Yeah, he says.

We look at the other tables. Nobody listening.

I appreciate you meeting me, he says.
So? I ask.
Let’s never talk again, he says.
Yeah, I say.

…..

First published in Naugatuck River Review
Photo by eak k

The power is not out

 

The power is not out

You made it. Hell of a drive.
Now in the cabin you’re shivery, raw.
Floorboards tremble.
Branches pelt the roof.
Rain blows under the door.
Phone? Lamp? Radio?
All wires, dead.

You fetch wood,
build a fire, heat water,
light lanterns named Aladdin.
Play guitar, help the neighbor start her car.
Clinging to this mountain
your cabin is a spot of warm
in a dark storm.
You are power.

…..

From my book Random Saints
First published in Califragile
Photo by Simon Goetz
Note: I wrote this long ago — the Aladdin lamps date it. My lamps today are battery-operated. But we still have storms, lose electricity, trees still fall here in La Honda. Neighbors still help neighbors. Humane power.

Mr. Hilton

 

Mr. Hilton

My Uber driver in bushy white beard
says Wowza! with a memorable pitch
not heard since high school as he
conveys me skillfully, rapidly
up and down the streets of San Francisco
so I say “Excuse me, but did you once
used to teach eleventh grade English
in Montgomery County, Maryland?”
For half a minute he grimaces, shakes his head.
Awkward, he says. ‘Did you once used to.’  
Wowza!

In memory I drown. Speechless.
I’m the kid who doodled poems, stories for nobody
and for no purpose until clean-shaven Mr. Hilton
praised, encouraged, cheered.
Back then he was gay and couldn’t say.
Quoted Walt Whitman in a singsongy voice.
Sometimes he’d vow to quit teaching
and drive a taxi around D.C. and write
a novel about political mucketymucks.

“Did you write a novel?” I ask.
Drove taxi.
“And wrote a novel?”
Not exactly.
“You were my best teacher.”
Thank you. He grins. You just made my day.

He studies me, eyes in mirror. Who are you?
I tell him my name and say, “You inspired me.”
Inspired what?
I tell him I write poetry.
Sorry, he says. A miserable occupation.

The ride ends and I say, “You changed my life.”
To be honest, he says, I don’t remember you.
“Thank you for discovering me.”
Nonsense. Wowza! You were always there.
He won’t accept a tip.

…..

First published in Naugatuck River Review
Photo by catceeq on Pixabay

Are you the one?

 

Are you the one?

    Are you the one
at last to discover
    I don’t know diddly?

    Yes ma’am I can fix that toilet
patch that roof
    replace that gutter

    Secretly
in the cab of my pickup
    I refer to clandestine books

    All smiles
at the lumberyard at the electric store
    I chat up advice

    My screw-ups, an education
my scars, an encyclopedia
    happy houses, my resume

    Are you the one
at last to comprehend
    what a fraud I am?

    Working scared
is the best way
    to do an honest job

    Please don’t tell

…..

First published in Northampton Poetry Review
Photo by Andy Gries
Note: It’s called Imposter Syndrome. I had a particularly severe case because I was self-taught. In the school of construction work, you either do it right or you don’t get paid. That’s the report card. And I really needed good grades.

Carpenter Sunrise

 

Carpenter Sunrise

From my window I see
branches dripping
gray fog.
I face a long day
heaving heavy boards,
testing
my brittle back,
glasses wet
with sweat,
porcupine fingers
bristling splinters,
shaping lumber
with a clear heart.

    Carpenter, carpenter, what do you say?
    Cut wood all day,
    bring home the pay:
    a pocketful of sawdust.

With strange joy
I can't wait
to begin.

…..

From my book Son of a Poet.
Photo by Julian DC on Pixabay.
Note: I wrote this poem 41 years ago after a long rainy day of work when I tried to buy a sandwich, found only sawdust in my pockets, and felt this strange surge of joy: I love my work, I love my life. (Bob Cook, the owner at La Honda Market, let me have the sandwich for sawdust.) You can find the full story in my book 99 Jobs.

Breast to Breast with Whom

 

Breast to Breast with Whom

My job, maintenance
on graveyard shift so I’m up
a stepladder at 3AM replacing
ballasts in fluorescent fixtures.
A radio is spraying bubblegum pop
when suddenly some sober jackass
in newscaster voice is explaining why God
wants us to launch nuclear weapons.
 
This is it. I’ll be vaporized
right here on this stepladder
in this godawful factory.

I want to jump in my car
speed to our cottage, to you,
to die breast to breast.

And then a kid about 18
with a push broom below me
sees the panic in my face up above
and laughs: “It’s the crappy radio,
jumps stations. That’s the God show.
You all right?”

I say “I just realized— It matters
where we die. And with whom.”
The kid laughs, makes air quotes.
“‘With whom,’ Professor Handyman?”
Yes. With whom.

I remember this now
from bubblegum to Armageddon
as I say goodbye via Zoom to Aunt Nattie
all tubed up in a hospital bed, Covid,
closest we can come as her oxygen drops
with no one breast to breast.
She dies with whom?
Alone, with Zoom.

…..

First published in Halfway Down the Stairs. Thank you editor Jeannie E. Roberts.
Photo by Cdd20 on Pixabay

My wife invites her ex-boyfriend to lunch

 

My wife invites her ex-boyfriend to lunch

She tells me Justin had good jokes,
good manners, was a card shark
and a militant Baptist. They broke up
because she always burst into giggles
when he kissed her. She never told him why.
Giggled, she tells me now, because
kissing Justin was like kissing a pug.

So we meet. Justin seems shocked
to see she’s pregnant. Congratulates her. Us.
Justin has big lips and a fuzzy face.
Tells funny stories, has impeccable manners.
Says he’s married to a woman who wants
to make films. Not movies. Films.
Says she has moods. Big moods.
Says she used to be political but couldn’t choose sides.
Says she covered their new wallpaper with tinfoil.
Says she subconsciously converted their apartment
into a dump because that’s what she was used to.
Says she’s bad at choices.
Like, look, (he laughs) she chose him.

So, my wife asks, do you love her?
At once Justin and I are both on alert.
Yes, Justin says. Yes, we kiss. A lot.
That’s good, my wife says.

After lunch,
we all shake hands.

…..

First published in Roanoke Review

Studebaker Stick Shift

 

Studebaker Stick Shift

On back roads, gravel,  
Ed teaches me to drive.
We cross a stone bridge, Antietam Creek.
Ed says upstream from here the bloodiest day,
creek ran red, dead meat stinking in ditches,
young men our age, you and me
not the bankers
not the plantation owners
they were brothers like us slaughtering each other
because old people told them to.
Now it’s birdsong, green and peaceful,
honeysuckle feeding on bones.

Narrow road. Ed shouts: Slow down!
As I hit the brake, a souped-up Ford
yellow and black like a giant wasp
speeds over the hilltop mid-road,
would’ve been head-on. Somehow
Ed foresaw.

In California Ed’s brain a battlefield.
Thoughts drop like flies on a windowsill.
Studebaker, he laughs, sounds like a Swedish chef.
Still he remembers that creek, that bridge.
I remember Vietnam, his frantic calls,
how he steered me away
from that big hill.

…..

First published in Speckled Trout. Thank you editors Kevin McDaniel and Nancy Dillingham.
photo of Antietam Creek Bridge by David Mark

Antietam Creek

 

Antietam Creek

We dog and housesat
in a big stone mansion
for a rich family every summer
gathering aunts and uncles   
near grassy rolling battlefields
where a hundred years ago
cousins slaughtered cousins.

Cousin Buff was my summer buddy
throwing tennis balls for Cookie
who dropped them slobbery at our bare feet.
One time gently between doggy lips
Cookie brought a crumbling hip bone
and the sheriff said Yeah, poor kid,
because so many were so young
and their bones preserved better
as if they wanted to grow old.

Buff was always two years taller,
liked banjos, laughed at city music,
said si-reen instead of siren.

Then one summer Buff had a girlfriend
with an actual bosom and I was still a kid
like pressing my face against glass
as he left my life.

Buff died I learn from a Facebook
photo of an old man I never saw
blaming abortions and gun control
for his cancer and I bet if he met me
we would fight.

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen.

Tony Lamas

 

Tony Lamas

I buy a dump of a house in Frisco.
It comes with a tenant named Tito
who stays a few days trading work.

Tito spreads plastic on the steep roof
as a storm blows in from the Pacific. He's agile,
a daredevil in blasts of wind and splats of rain
as the sky turns black. Easier, Tito says,
than some sailboats he's crewed.

 "I don't do good with kids," Tito says.
He has a child in Maine with cerebral palsy.
The mom, he says, started out gorgeous.  
"I'm the snakebit type," he says. "I'm a bad star."
I tell him I don't believe in fortune and stars.
"Try sailing," Tito says.

Soon Tito departs, crewing to the Panama Canal
then up the coast, back to Maine.
"Kid's got my nose."
Traveling light, he gives me a pair of boots.
"I ain't the cowboy type," he says.

I find I'm not the city type. Sell the house,
go rural where my child Joshua finds
those Tony Lamas, too big for little legs
but he clomps merrily into the yard
only to be struck by a giant rattlesnake.

My heart screams.
Joshua literally jumps out of the boot.
The rattler can't extract fangs from the leather
and goes thrashing and dragging into the weeds.
Joshua unbitten.

Out there where the tumbleweed tumbles,
if you find by the light of stars a single Tony Lama
with a rattlesnake skeleton attached, take it.
Keep it. For good fortune.

…..

First published in I-70 Review. Thank you editors Maryfrances, Gary, and Greg.
Photo by Roy Harryman
Note: not my boot in the photo, and probably not a Tony Lama. But it captures the spirit.

Boy Scout Knife

 

Boy Scout Knife

I open a drawer and am face to face
with a mama packrat who leaps to the floor,
three newborns clinging to teats, flop-flop-flop.
Drags them to a hole. And gone.

Beneath the nest sits my old pocketknife
now rusted, soaked in life’s liquids. Wrecked.
My son says “I want it.”
I say “It’s ruined.”
He says “I’ll fix it.”
“What will you do with it?”
“Cut things.”
“What things?”
“Things.’
For the inexplicable, he needs.
As once did I.

He scrubs with steel wool, oil.
I demonstrate the whetstone. How to hold, fold.
The blade is pitted, black, but sharp.
A six-year-old with a bulging pocket,
a need fulfilled, an edge that kills.

Mama rat, may your babes survive.
Thrive. My son, non-scout, gentle soul,
grows tall. Uses the knife
for nothing at all.

…..

First published in Freshwater

Hot Tub Wedding, Late October

 

Hot Tub Wedding, Late October

High noon Napa Valley sunshine.
Juliet is cleaning her hot tub
when William calls from Coeur d’Alene.
Juliet: ‘Hey old man.’
William: ‘Hey old lady.’

William will perform a wedding
at mountain sunset. He says
puddles are frozen and a nasty
cloud is lowering overhead
so he’s cleaning the barn to hold guests
plus the horse and six chickens.
William: ‘The wood stove is smoking. You smell it?’
Juliet: ‘You smell the bromide I’m scrubbing?’

William always calls before weddings.
With a mail-order license he officiated  
his first, Juliet’s, five decades past —
hastily arranged in that same barn.
Later she learned: it broke his heart.
Which is why after college he stayed.

Juliet: ‘Fire weather here. It’s scary hot, dry.’
William: ‘Snow tonight. I’ll be pushing cars.’
Tonight, alone, she will soak under stars.

The calls always end the same:
William: ‘Stay safe.’
Juliet: ‘Keep warm.’
William: ‘I do. I always do.’

…..

First published in Windfall—thank you Bill Siverly and Michael McDowell, editors

Fixer Upper

 

Fixer Upper

Scraping moldy wallpaper
easily peeled
we find a message
scratched by pencil
on plaster:

  Pleas love this house
  where Babys grew
  So much joy!
  before sorrow
  When spirits call
  pleas give
  our Blessing

Might spook buyers
lower the value
but pleas…
Over this spot
we place glass, a frame.
Not all flips are the same.

…..

First published in Halfway Down the Stairs. Thank you editors Jeannie E. Roberts and Phillip Watts Brown.
Photo by Daniel Tuttle

Life Lesson

 

Life Lesson

Big silent eyes
of the boy in the backpack
absorb the green and blue
of this fresh morning
when we hear brakes squeal.
Arp! A doggy yelp.
Me jogging, boy bouncing,
we find a white dog hit by a car,
bloody. Car gone.

We follow the dog to Hippie Hollow,
a front porch. I know this house,
the bedroom with curtains open
where once on a night walk
I stopped among others,
sidewalk passersby, watching
as a woman danced naked to a mirror.
“Somebody should tell her,” a man said.
“She knows,” a woman said.

White dog is whining, raining blood.
I knock. Door opens. A kid.
“My mom’s in bed.”
TV cartoons. Loud ones. Mayhem.
“Would you wake her?”

She comes out in a see-through nightgown
looking sleepy and annoyed.
She says her dog never goes to the road.
“Every day,” I say.
She twitches my son’s nose in the backpack
and says, “Hi there, cutie,” then winks at me
while her dog is bleeding all over the carpet.

My job is done. I turn to leave.
Her kid is crying about the blood.
She shouts, “Turn that crap off!”
From the backpack my son watches
with wide quiet eyes, whatever
one learns at the age of six months
about squalor and blood and sexy women.
Some day I hope he’ll explain.

……

From my book Random Saints
First published in Verse-Virtual thanks to Firestone Feinberg, editor
Photo by me of my son Jesse.

Blood in a Drought Year

 

Blood in a Drought Year

In a midnight thunderstorm,
Jeannie my landlady phones, says she’s scared.
Says a man pounded on her door
dark and bleeding like a redwing blackbird.
He wanted to use her phone
so she wrapped his ribs in a sheet.
He told her to turn out the lights
so he wouldn’t be seen.
“Wait a minute. You let him in?”
“Of course! He was naked.”
Jeannie is 80, still a coquette.  

I go next door to Jeannie’s house.
On the floor, drops of blood.
Back yard I find a sheet, scarlet stain.
She offers me a hot toddy, makes one for herself.
Offers one to the sheriff when he arrives.
Sheriff calls for a canine unit.

Drama usually starts down in Hippie Hollow,
so by flashlight I walk to where a clutch of people
are smoking sweet stuff. Old story.
Sharon the window dancer caught
by her boyfriend in bed with another man.
Took the argument out to the street. All drunk.
A knife. The dude ran. It’s a game they play.

I report to Jeannie. Sheriff shakes his head.
Jeannie makes more hot toddies.
Canine says the dude is long gone.
The oak trees drip but the rain has stopped.
Stars overhead, clear and crisp.
Jeannie says “No matter how badly my body hurts,
nights like this keep me alive.”

Thunderstorms drench the night,
quickly pass. After lightning,
the air is so crisp, so fresh.
We need the rain.

…..

First published in Red Eft Review
Note: another poem about my landlady. This particular night was October 7, 1974. We lived  in a funky little enclave of cottages called Wagon Wheels. It was never boring. I’ve written about Sharon the window dancer in another poem…

As a favor I sweep raccoon poop from my landlady’s roof

 

As a favor I sweep raccoon poop
from my landlady’s roof

In return she mixes me a hot toddy
and shows the gangway constructed
by her husband Cyrus, a series of planks
from the oak tree to her kitchen window
where raccoons enter and ransack her shelves.
In spring they bring cubs.
Cyrus fed them from his fingers.
He collapsed right here at the table. His heart.

Owls come to that same window.
They stare but never enter.
Last week an owl brought a dead vole
with the head removed. An offering.
She could hear Cyrus laughing.
There’s an echo in this house.
Cyrus used to tell her to touch her toes
and then he’d touch her from behind.
They had no children, he couldn’t.

Once a cub jumped a stove burner
and caught fire. She threw a pot of tea.
The cub vaulted out the window.
Probably died. When animals die
you never see them. Almost never.
Sometimes at night Cyrus wakes her,
whispers this or that. Silly stuff,
and then he chuckles. The echo.

That poop is toxic, you know.
Enough hot toddies, don’t you think?
Now go away before I touch my toes.

…..

First published in Rat’s Ass Review. Thank you Roderick Bates, editor.
Note: For years I had an interesting landlady. Old, sometimes flirtatious, sharp as a tack. Many stories.

Stick-Me-Tights

 

Stick-Me-Tights

Embraced by weed that clings,
by nettle that stings, I harvest boards.
I’d rather embrace the young bride
who will scrape a bungalow to build a mansion
but this old fence, precious like barn wood,
weathered yet strong, they’ll use for decor,
perhaps the front door.

Decades ago
in a rougher town I set these posts,
nailed these planks for a thorny man
who leered at schoolgirls, offered massage.
A Molotov cocktail destroyed his garage.
So he hired me to wall the property
like a stockade for rusting Volvos
while the town grew less hardscrabble,
more gentry.

I speak no history to this innocent,
unborn when this saga began.
I am the ancient handyman.

She writes a check
while I pluck stick-me-tights
from shorts, from socks, from shirt.
Ick! she says. Don’t drop them in my dirt.
So I’ve brought this handful for you, my friend,
the clutch of history from weed country
to do what seeds do.

…..

First published in Visitant
Photo by me

At the Mercy of Orphans

 

At the Mercy of Orphans

In my corner of the mountains
the pitter patter of rain on the roof
goes thud
crash
and sometimes
smash.

Spare me, Big Trees.
Spare my house
built of the flesh of your
fathers.

…..

From my book Son of a Poet
Note: I love redwoods and my soul takes shelter within their forest but I’m also a carpenter and the big trees are aware… 40 years ago in a windstorm a tree trunk like a giant axe sliced my neighbor’s house in half. The poem was prescient; I wrote it a few months before that storm.

Ode to a Long Ago Heat Wave

 

Ode to a Long Ago Heat Wave

At the age of eleven,
in a brick school like a pizza oven
I took a typing class,
summer steamy Maryland,
then would practice at home
bare top, sometimes bare bottom
in front of a fan.

At the age of eleven, a crush
can be crushing so when left-handed Ula
wild as a bobcat insisted typing is different
for a leftie, I said, “Show me.”
As the fan rustled paper,
as perspiration dripped like grease
from eyebrows, nose, chin
onto Underwood keys
making Ula’s fingers slip,
all I could think was freckles.
Dimple. Smile.

At the age of eleven, no matter the heat,
girls shouldn’t be topless with boys
even with innocent intent.
We knew this. Maybe not so innocent.
Ula proved – yes – left-handed people
type differently. Or at least one did.

At the age of eleven, a boy
should not say aloud to a girl
that her little breasts look lopsided.
Left bigger, right smaller.

Both pretty, I might add at age seventy-one
were I ever to see you again, Ula,
and do you also, as I right now,
wonder what might have been?

…..

First published in MOON Magazine. Thank you editor Leslee Goodman.
photo by Johanna Nikolaus

Ode to Replacing a 50-Gallon Water Heater

 

Ode to Replacing a 50-Gallon Water Heater

Wrestling the mass of a gorilla
but less furry less flexible
removing crusty pipe
amid fragrance of rat droppings
and it is wet, puddles and streams of wet
because that is why you called me
so I bring the tools
the knowledge I carry
the pride.

There is delicacy in plumbing
an art that rises beyond skill
to turn tight but not too
to thread tiny fittings
feathery fingertip to vise-like hand strength
to lift large
with visible results
a gleaming new tank.

I bring warmth
to your morning face your dirty dishes
your strawberry shampoo hair.
Think of me.

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen.
photo by Woon Kuongchin

Freedom of God, Freedom of Whiskey

 

Freedom of God, Freedom of Whiskey

The king of France
was a fancy-pants.
“Join the church I desire
or I’ll set you on fire”
was the king’s decree,
so Bartholomew, Huguenot, ancestor of me,
for freedom of God chose to flee
by sailing ship across the sea.

Bartholomew had a grandson named Peter.
With disdain of all that’s pompous,
with adze, froe, and cooper’s compass,
Peter built barrels in Maryland.
Barrels for gunpowder, barrels for tea,
barrels to blow the British into the sea.
Peter fought for George Washington,
then took his family
single file on horses through wilderness
to set up a cooperage
in the land of Kentucky
building barrels for corn, barrels for whiskey,
barrels for the sober and barrels for the frisky
with adze, froe, and cooper’s compass
and with disdain for all that’s pompous.

Peter had a grandson, John T
who moved west of the Mississippi.
John T cut trees and slid them downhill
to the river where he built a mill
making railroad ties to meet the demand
for tracks to stitch this unsettled land
from California to the Atlantic sands.
John T with a gift for oration
preached against slavery, the abomination.
In anger, for opening his mouth
a lynch mob came from the South.
They kidnapped John T
to hang him from a tree
near Canaan, Missouri.

The great-great grandson of John T
is me.
With tool belt, hammer, and drill
my heritage is the skill
to build what people need,
to speak with moral compass
with disdain for all that’s pompous.
We built whiskey barrels. We cut railroad ties.
Now I build houses and tell you no lies.

…..

Photo by amyvand

Jason never cusses

 

Jason never cusses

because with nine children he keeps clean
habits but now I hear an ear-burner as he’s
clutching fingers dripping valentine red like
he’s trying to stop a faucet from his heart
so from the first aid box I wrap gauze around
two fingers half severed though Jason says
at first it felt like a squirt of water no pain
as I spiral orange duct tape over gauze like
clown fingers and say I’ll take him to Kaiser
but he wants to drive himself so I say hold
the hand elevated above your heart and please
don’t pass out as he says now there’s some
pain yes indeed but then he runs back clomp
clomp big boots to the board he was sawing
and finishes the cut, perfect.

Swipes with his shirt sleeve
swishing spatters of scarlet
to leave all things clean.

Then he hops in the truck. Gone. Gone fast.
Because that’s Jason. Not that any of us cared
but he simply had to finish that cut.

…..

First published in The Adriatic
Photo by Myriams-Fotos

The pilot cuts power to the engines

 

The pilot cuts power to the engines

as we’re crossing the snowy Sierra
and the plane drifts lower
across the fertile valley of rivers
to the airport by the bay.

My Uber driver has a straggly beard,
calico flesh with spots of white like half-moons,
eyes with a touch of the wild
like you see in Malamutes
with their wolf-ancestor DNA
who should be watched around small children.

He asks “Where from?”
I say “Just back from DC.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yes.”
The driver mutters a curse, then smiles.
“Come,” he says.
“Where?” I ask.

He drives me south through suburbs like a Lego set
then west among mountains like misty breasts
into a forest dense as bear fur
to a redwood tree with a burn scar so large
he can drive inside it and park.
“Get out” he says.

Beneath my feet are beer cans, cigarette butts.
Scent of charred wood mixes with urine.
It smells like the city I just left.
“Come,” he says.

We climb spiral stairs within the trunk
and walk out onto a massive limb
high above the other treetops,
wisps of fog blowing from the blue Pacific
in breeze that ruffles our hair
with the fragrance of salt-spray, of photosynthesis,
of prowling pumas and fresh unfolding fern.
A pair of red-tailed hawks soar spirals in an updraft.

“Here” he says.
“Yes” I say.
“You will pay me now.”
And gladly, I do.

…..

From my book Random Saints.
First published in Rat’s Ass Review. Thank you editor Roderick Bates.
Photo by me, taken in La Honda. That’s fog, not smoke.

Note: I wrote this when you-know-who was president.

A Kitten, a Child, a Great Horned Owl

 

A Kitten, a Child, a Great Horned Owl

As Oreo naps in a sunny patch
the great horned owl drops like a cruise missile
to snatch with explosion of wings.

Howling, rising toward the moon
Oreo with feline super strength lurches.
Breaks loose.

Falls like a fuzzy pineapple.
Snatches a branch in a redwood tree
high as an eight-story building.

Your child comes home. What do you tell her?
Swallow hard. Point to a fur-ball
clinging beyond ladder height, beyond help.

Set food at the base of the tree.
All through evening echo the child’s
Here kitty kitty into dark forest.
Tuck her tears into bed and pillow.

At dawn, lucky you, awaken to
a scratching at bedroom screen.  

Is love a choice, or born within?
Might this amazing child
choose the opposite of hate?

After quiet reflection
might she respect owls,
their silent flight, their grace?

Behold Oreo, full grown.
See scars of talon holes on her shoulders.
Watch as daughter strokes a peaceful purring cat
who evermore sleeps under benches,
never on top.

…..
First published in Muddy River Review. Thank you Zvi A. Sesling, editor.
Painting by Katie Col
Photo by Dennis Demcheck

 

Alexandra

 

Alexandra

Creekside I meet
a giggly girl who says
Crawdads are tickling my toes.
From the mudbank a boy warns
If you touch her I’ll kill you.
 
She’s special, he tells me.
She hears fireflies
the sound when they light up
because she’s blind you know.
She hears colors too.

So I say I’m special
because I can smell bullshit
and what color are my pants?
Blue, she says. Blue jeans.

She talks to water striders,
says an owl is watching us with one eye
and she hears clouds fluffing in the sky.

She touches my wrist
seems to know where it will be
runs a finger up my arm through the hairs
makes me shiver.
See you later, she says. Ha ha.
Her brother leads her away.

Can love crackle in full color
just beyond our sight? Some nights
under quivering stars I listen.

…..

First published in Third Wednesday
photo by Penny Christensen

Milkmaid Molly

 

Milkmaid Molly

Plopped in a pasture like a brick turd
the high school sits stinking, surrounded by cattle
as subdivisions advance. For mockery
the hotshot kids paint a cow on the chimney.

One girl with sun-sprinkled complexion
the hotshots call Milkmaid Molly
for her notable chest and for explaining
a late assignment as
    I was up all night with a sick cow
and yes, she handles five of them before
sunrise but she dresses nice for school.

Surprise — I win the Harvard Prize Book
and Molly asks if I’m going. I say
it never entered my mind. She says
    Do it, I know you’ll do well.
She stands closer than I’m comfortable
with breasts jutting out, almost poking me.
I’m a loner with high grades, low socials;
flustered I thank her and that’s the end
except another day I’m walking in the hallway
behind a hotshot who goes Moo-oo at Molly
and for a moment all I see is white hot flame
as my low-fashion leather Rockports
without instruction from my brain kick his ass
and he skids sprawling down the linoleum tiles.
Later I pay in bruises and detention.

Harvard rejects me but—wow—Molly gets in.
Who’da thunk it? I congratulate her and she says
    You shouldn’t have kicked him.
    That’s what kept you out.
I tell her I’d do it again.
She’s standing too close as she says
    My dad told me what we learn
    in high school we never forget.
We drive out to her farm. She shows me around,
confides she really prefers girls. I confess
I prefer them, too, that is if I ever. She says
    You probably want to touch my breasts,
    but sorry you can’t.
Later as we laugh, I learn to milk a cow,
altering forever my view of nipples.
Good to know, Harvard or no.

…..

First published in Rat’s Ass Review. Thank you editor Roderick Bates.
Nominated for Best of Net.
Photo from the Walter Johnson High School yearbook.
Note: It’s true my high school sat in the middle of a pasture with a cow painted on the chimney. It’s true I won the Harvard Prize Book, and true that Harvard rejected my admission (thank you) leading me westward. But I have no idea what shoes I was wearing…

Open Range

 

Open Range

You study me from the shotgun seat
making me squirm so I point to a cow
scratching her back against a telephone pole
with obvious bovine pleasure. Evening gives
Nevada a beauty it lacks when bright and hot.

We from the foggy redwood coast of California
might never fit here but love passing
where somehow life makes a different sense.

One longhorn blocks us, ripping grass
from cracks in pavement. I stop the bug.
The beast outweighs it. We step out.

You’re gazing at me, not the munching cow
or the oncoming night of white clouds,
charcoal sky in a silence made more so
by the chirping of a single cricket.

We’re driving back roads to Boston
for jobs we don’t want but ought to try
for career, for good sense in a stone cold city.

My bladder calls. Black-eyed Susans
line the road so I aim at rocks
as it would seem a crime to pee on flowers
especially with you watching as you are.

“I might be pregnant,” you say. Your face,
always lit, now by starlight brighter still.
No breeze and yet the telephone wires
are singing, ringing.

Across the sky comes an orange flare,
too fast for a jet. I have time to say “Look!”
Without a sound the meteor explodes,
red fragments dropping like stars toward earth.

“I sort of knew,” I say. The moon is rising
from behind a mountain silhouetting each pine.
The glow advances tree to tree along the ridge
like the hand of a clock. And now we don’t care
if that cow stays forever.

“Thank you, Lucy,” you whisper toward the beast
who in truth has no name but an ear tag.
Without a word we W-turn the jam-packed beetle
forward, back, forward, back on the narrow lane
and drive westward, drive home.

…..

First published in Williwaw Journal — thank you Rachel Barton, editor
Photo by Ellen26 on Pixabay

Tully’s Tools

 

Tully’s Tools

We sit in Tully’s workshop
because after surgery he needs
scent of sawdust, smoke of solder,
surround of well-worn tools.

Tully has a rack of 57 screwdrivers.
Each, a story. We talk about tools stolen,
still pissed after all these years. We speak of
tools outdated like the Yankee driver, or tools
everlasting like this crowbar from Tully’s grandpa.

We speak of the dangerous — aren’t they all?
Here this bandsaw took Tim Russo’s toe,
tragic but you have to laugh at how it happened.
Right now on the table Tully is repairing
my old hammer-drill just for the fun of fixing.

From the scrap pile our kiddies
used to make sailboats and dolls.
With this glue we taught them
to fix toys broken. With these boards
to build, not buy. With our trucks
to change oil, to drive stick shift.
They may stare at screens but secretly
we embedded craft and competence
unto their genes, they’ll find out.

Mending is an art.
In the workshop slowly, surely,
Tully heals among his tools.

…..

First published in I-70 Review
photo is mine

Carpenter of the Milky Way

 

Carpenter of the Milky Way

Tully tells me Watch the sky.
At sunset Mars will conjoin Earth’s moon.
Tully is close witness of celestial construction.
By nature a day sleeper, by night
he works with wood.

Now his spine squeezes nerve. Stenosis.
Surgery could unlock him. Or paralyze.
Tully calls it The risk of a strenuous life.
Walks with a cane. Lubricates
with marijuana for the pain.

Tully practices gentle optimism. A secret Samaritan.
When animals were drowning in the reservoir
while the town bickered, Tully under night sky
drove his truck to the gate, repaired the sagging fence.
Told no one but me. Now I tell you.

He evacuated his cabin when the mountain caught fire,
now lives with daughter and granddaughter
sharing Just So Stories with delight.
He’ll show her Mars and Moon tonight.

After surgery I’ll be turning cartwheels,
he says with a laugh. The joke is,
he’s built them in the past.
Entire carts. Built them by lamp light,
under the burning stars.

…..

First published in Monterey Poetry Review