My Song Americana

 

My Song Americana

I come to you barefoot
I chew bluegrass, drink corn
My rain is muddy water

My hands are raw from picking cotton
My lungs are black with coal
My farm is dust

I follow rivers by raft,
herd longhorns by horseback,
ride boxcars over endless plain

I killed the native and the buffalo
I regret
I sing of what remains

I am outlaw—I seek justice
I celebrate love—I betray it
I despise the rich—I want riches

I raise children in rags
They outgrow my front porch,
my tumbledown shack
I shame them with my twang,
my holler of blues

My children trade tractors for Teslas
They bring the south north
They take the west east

My children return with fresh children
who throw off shoes, who paddle kayaks,
who dive into muddy water
and come up clean

……

First published in Anti-Heroin Chic—thank you James Diaz, editor.
Photos are of Son House and Woody Guthrie

Juanita of Kansas

 

Juanita of Kansas

Road-tripping from goofy California
we are a mom, pop, 3 kids  
come calling on Aunt Juanita
in calm Kansas this Sunday
surrounded by rustling rows of corn.
At a picnic table we eat barbecued
buffalo steak from Juanita’s small herd,
Juanita’s bloody butchering.
Tastes like spicy beef.

Joining us is one marvelous insect.
Gently it hovers, sets down on the table
like a puff of dandelion, size of a baseball
made of air and beams of light
with delicate spindly legs and
lichen-like scales of no apparent use
except beauty. Kids and I bend close
over the tabletop examining, exclaiming
“Oh wow,” wondering what in the world
as if God’s jewelry had dropped
from heaven until Juanita says
“I don’t know what it is but—”
WHAP goes her big hand
and crushes the bug with her napkin.
“It’s my farm,” Juanita says,
and that’s that.

……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen.
Photo by me.
Note: I still don’t know what that insect was. Can’t find an image on the internet.

Sika hires me

 

Sika hires me

to “shape up” her time capsule house
now that she’s widowed from, she says,
“67 years of functional marriage.”

Crusty pipes, knob-and-tube wires
eke out driblets of water and voltage.
I mustn’t change the vibe, she says,
the blond wood soul of 1950s ranch house
because, Sika says, “Fifties was functional.”

Sometimes, says Sika, she and Gino would argue
until they realized they weren’t angry,
merely hungry, so together
they’d cook an omelette.

Sometimes in bed Sika would awaken
because Gino was thinking. She’d say
“Gino, stop thinking so I can sleep.”

When Gino got snappy like a lobster
they’d drive an hour to the ocean
so he could wet his gills body-surfing
while Sika studied tide pools, and did I know
barnacles have a penis 8 times their body length
so they can reach their unknown neighbors?
If only people, she says, maybe sex
wouldn’t be so damn awkward.

Sika’s like a playful long-haired cat
unashamed to pause for licking private parts.

I tell Sika I need to open up walls.
Breaking eggs will be messy but when I’m done
the omelette will taste as great as you remember,
function in ways you will not see.
Sika says, “Precisely.”
……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen.
Photo by Mark Martins.

I would rather put a chainsaw to my legs

 

I would rather put a chainsaw to my legs

Tips of branches turn yellow;
needles float down as from heaven.
My heaven, a redwood forest.

I sweep duff with broom, leaf blower,
snow shovel, mounds rumpling earth
like rough blankets.

Mornings from the wood pile
accompanied by a toddling daughter
I’d cradle logs in my arms shaking off duff
and carry to the wood stove, warm fire.

I install a furnace, forced air.
Thirty years pass — to the redwoods, the blink
of an eye — and I dig, duff mining  
to remove a prickly hill of decay
interlaced with roots of relentless ivy.
Long overdue, I’m restoring my little half acre
so giants can outlast me, outlast a millennium.

Here — two feet down, a plastic tarp
over stacked bundles of fungus, once firewood.
Beneath it all a long lost baby spoon
shaped like a rusty kangaroo.
My daughter would stash gifts
for little critters, mice. Now men.
Received. My heart in heaven.

……

First published in Visitant — thank you editor Andrea Janda

Compost

 

Compost

Always an embarrassment, my father,
a bow-tie guy and president for Pete’s sake
of the Daffodil Society
so when he fenced a corner of the yard
and filled it with yellow bouquets wilted,
with grass clippings and moldy leaves of elm
wafting an odor like an old sponge,
it was another sad fact to hide about my family
until the dry winter day I saw steam rising.

With friend Jimmy I jumped in,
made burrows, caves,
prairie dogs in a warm hill of decay
spreading chaos which my father
must have cleaned later.

Some gone days like wilted bouquets
grow warm.

……

First published in Silver Birch Press— thank you editor Melanie.

Note: An ancient oak tree fell at my children’s school. Workers ran it through a chipper, left a giant pile. After the next rainfall, the mound of wood chips wafted steam. The scent was the trigger. As a child I thought of an old sponge but now the scent so sharp yet rich and deep I recognized as of an old whiskey barrel. I placed my hand inside the mound and yes, so warm. After decades dormant, this memory poured into my cup, and I drank.

The sleeping bag is wet with dew

 

The sleeping bag is wet with dew

I’m warm enough
awake in fading starlight,
hint of dawn lifting roads,
strings of lamps among woven fields
sharpening as sky relentlessly brightens.
Hello, sunrise
from Mount Sugar, a modest mountain
but the best I’ve got.

This trail home I know by heart.
Here are your roses tangled pink as
your exuberance climbing a fence.

The dog remained all night on watch.
In the kitchen you wait with cold coffee
accepting that once a year
I climb a mountain by moonlight
testing a murmur, an atrial flutter
to view a dawn that will come
regardless of witness.

I say you could do better than me but
you say There are no hierarchies of love.
Ask any dog. The dog isn’t talking
but I saw sunrise from Mount Sugar.
Our hearts so strong, I swear.

……

First published in Halfway Down the Stairs—thank you editor Jeannie E. Roberts
Photo (from Sugarloaf Mountain, Maryland, my beloved boyhood climb) by Bishal Regmi

so many words

 

so many words
I have wasted
but the best
shall endure

peace
    birth
        I love you

……

photo by Wildschuetz

Hardware is magic

 

Hardware is Magic

Hardware is magic
only wizards can work.

Molly bolts that fold and … sproing.
Chain goes clank. Pulleys go squeak.
Eye bolts, what vision do they seek?

Faucet handles like fingers of porcelain.
Tiny springs from ballpoint pens—they fly!
Big springs from some old bed—they bounce!

Ornate doorknobs to open a mystery.
Spark plugs. Radiator caps. Just add car.
Wing nuts—perhaps they’ll flap and soar.
Hinges—just add door.

Curtain cleats like horns from a shrunken ox.
Accumulated over years to this box
in coffee cans, in jelly jars
for the purpose I knew would come.

Now, my grandson.
I can see in your eyes you are ready.
For you, cheerful wizard.
Make magic.

……

First published in Your Daily Poem— thank you editor Jayne Jaudon Ferrer

Walter Johnson fires a fastball, Elvis Presley crowds the plate

 

Walter Johnson fires a fastball,
Elvis Presley crowds the plate

At a tender age you learn to glaze windows
when you pitch tennis balls to the brick wall
of your house. You learn curveball and fast,
you try the knuckle, sweep glass.

You learn to hate the mulberries
that squish over the pitching mound.

You play next door with Mary Anne Morningstar
and you love the Elvis songs blaring
from her tinny transistor radio
as much as you hate the menacing hillbilly accent
of her full bourbon father who yodels
“Love me tay-ender, Love me troo-a-oo-a-oo.”

You find you can improve your arm
only as far as your body will allow,
one fat pitch can erase ten good ones,
there’s always some batter with a better eye,
some coach with a mean streak.

You learn your back yard was formerly
farmland owned by Walter Johnson,
one of the greatest pitchers of all time.
Your mulberries fed his chickens.
May his spirit feed your arm.

You develop hair down there
and see Mary Anne burst into tears
when you ask to see hers.
You jump back as she launches
a stone like a fastball into the radio
smashing it to jewels of plastic.

You learn she hates Elvis
and she hates her dad for his pelvis
and she loves God instead,
and you think maybe you love Mary Anne
like Elvis loves his momma
in a tender non-icky way.

You learn to cut glass, to curl putty with a knife.
You learn Walter Johnson after baseball
became an incompetent small time politician
and Elvis in Vegas turned squishy as mulberry.

You learn the easy passage from genius to fool.
Constellations fade with the dawn.
Remember Mary Anne.
Remember the stars.

……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig— thank you editor Hayley Haugen
photo is my Walter Johnson baseball card

Note: When Walter Johnson pitched for the Washington Senators he had a farm in Montgomery County, Maryland. The house where I grew up was built on that farmland.

Popcorn, Oil & Salt

 

Popcorn, Oil & Salt

In movie romance
you know the scene where one strips
(outer) clothes (this a television movie)
and jumps into water
(maybe off a cliff into an old quarry)
and then the other
(finding courage)
follows?

First some playful splashes,
then they tread water face to face
(droplets beading on brows)
and search eyes with caution, with wonder
(because in personality they seem opposites).

They kiss.
(Once, quickly.)
Now they check for reaction and
(if actors are good) we see emotions
play across faces from uncertainty to delight.
And they kiss again (slow lingering)
while the camera circles.

So I set down my bowl of olive-oiled popcorn
(Leccino makes it sweet, fruity, oddly grassy)
and say to you We’ve never done that.

You set down your of  bowl of garlic-salty popcorn
(because you like it sharp, crisp) and say
Next summer at the lake.

After a moment of thought
(because you are you) you say
How do they kiss and tread water at the same time? Are they kicking super hard? Don’t their feet collide? Quarry water is insanely cold. How does the camera circle around them? On a boat? From a crane? Oh sorry—were you about to kiss me?

And I say (with popcorn in my teeth)
Next summer at the lake.

……

First published in Silver Birch Press (Spices and Seasonings Series)—thank you editor Melanie