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

Hear me: 

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.

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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

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Marcy calls to the attic hole

 

Marcy calls to the attic hole

where I’m banging around rewiring
“Come down right now!”
on a day the office is supposed to be closed.
Marcy needs to move a patient
so I walk into a room where a naked woman
lies on the heavy chiropractic table
with chunks of ceiling plaster,
a towel over her bum.

Marcy lifts the table, foot end.
I lift the table, head end.
Table-woman stares at my tool belt buckle
and smiles at the absurdity. We are all human.
We all maintain dignity.

In the hallway Marcy explains
“It’s her attendant’s day off but her spine
went berserk so here we are.”

Later, Marcy asks me to help lift table-woman
who is now in flowered dress and hat,
lift from wheelchair into a Rolls Royce
so Marcy grabs beneath the arms
while I (dusty with attic dirt)
grab table-woman’s bottom
and together one-two-three we hoist,
my hand of necessity on a soft spot.
Which is briefly weird, I tell you.
Marcy notices, cocks an eyebrow.

Table-woman thanks Marcy, then smiles at me,
above me, sweetly but with condescension
as if I never, squeezes the hand controls
and drives stately away.
My hand remembers.

Marcy whose job is bodies says
“You touch a person, something changes. Right?”
……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig—thank you editor Hayley Haugen

Hear me: 

This longest night

 

This Longest Night

Gusty snow rattles
    window glass
as one child wakes with a bloody nose
    which wakes the youngest
    which wakes the middle
chain reaction
all sleeping in one room
    for warmth
as nesting mice huddle
    among woven grass
    under sheets of ice.

Mom and dad juggle
    tissues, laps,
in this thin-walled house
this longest night.

We are poor.
We are parents.
We are not poor parents.

……

First published in CultureCult Anthology "Nocturne”

Note: The winter solstice of this poem was 4 decades ago in harder times. We shared our warmth.

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I’m burning my daughter’s dollhouse

 

I’m burning my daughter’s dollhouse

Please don’t tell her.
Not that she’d want it.
She’s 40, lives far away.

The furnace broke,
there’s no sunshine in December
and I’m burning my daughter’s dollhouse
that I built with scraps of pine from a paying job
for a Nobel Prize professor of economics,
a fancy wall of bookshelves that I underbid
one cold December long ago
for a moneyless Christmas
full of joy.

I’m burning my daughter’s dollhouse
that I painted white with a roof of red
with finger-size doors on tiny hinges.
From bits of wire I made tiny coat hangers.
From scraps of mahogany I made
a double bed for the mommy and daddy
plus three small beds and a cradle
that I oiled and polished until they glowed
so she could be proud.

I’m burning my daughter’s dollhouse
where meals were cooked,
where babies were born,
where children grew until gone.
Giving warmth, an orange flame
tinged with blue.

……

First published in Steam Ticket

Note: In December of 2018 my furnace broke, so I was depending on my fireplace—for six weeks, midwinter. At the same time I was cleaning out my garage and burning stuff for heat. Some I regret…

Hear me: 

Lester and Maggie and the 4-Wheel Bed

 

Lester and Maggie and the 4-Wheel Bed

Gruff gray Lester and Navaho Maggie
have no offspring but treat me like one.
For Lester I knock down a wall
and install fat rubber wheels under
the walnut monster of a double bed
they've shared 60 years—so he can roll
Maggie to the dining room and kitchen.
Magpie of Dawn, Lester says.
She keeps an eye on me.
Maggie's delighted, room to room
joking and chattering sometimes in Navaho
and you get used to the scent of urine.

Rolling is difficult for Lester who limps
and later more cumbersome with oxygen tanks
so I'm replacing cupped floor boards
when Maggie who is watching me work
points to a pair of coyotes—
one large wary male, one smaller calm female—
outside the window sitting on haunches
by the broken-down tractor staring right at us,
not unusual for a ranch house outside town but
then we hear a gurgling sound like water in a drain.
Lester a big man leaps to Maggie's side.
Bends his head to her heart while outside
in broad daylight those coyotes start to howl.
The two. Aroo-oo.
It tingles.
The air itself seems to glow.
Lester grabs his rifle from the wall and runs
to the window but those coyotes don't flinch.
Aroo-oo.
He lowers the gun with shaky hand, says
They're calling her home.

A couple weeks later after the service
Lester in his old wedding suit tight and ragged
hands me a cardboard box containing the wheels
he's removed and there's a note:
    For the next.
    Help them go home.
Now I'm no coyote but that box is
on the top shelf in the garage.
I'm telling you, son, so you'll know.

……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig

Hear me: 

Message to a Womb

 

Message to a Womb

She feels your hiccups
knows when you’re sleeping
says you move toward me
when I place cheek over womb

Gurgles but
all communication seems two-way, within
I’m without
It’s so quiet out here

In a belly-bare contest
    she wins on convexity
    and stretchity
I win on hairity

In a breast-bare contest
    she wins on utility
    and again, on beautity    
I, on muscularity

In a time-keeping contest
    I win on wrist-watchity
    She, on moon-cyclity

In a baby-making contest,
    no contest. We win.

I’m just the outsider DNA-supply
can’t nourish, can’t caress
the curly fingers twitching legs
the lips mouthing baby lyrics
when I sing to the navel call-response    
    Me: Oh you can’t get to heaven—
    You: bup lup, bup lup
    Me: —in my old car
    You: bup lup, bup lup
but we both know you’re in heaven on earth

What I’m trying to say is
you touch my spirit
and when you bust out
you’ll call, I’ll respond

……

First published in Red Wolf Journal. Thank you editor Irene Toh.

Note: I send poems on postcards. Lots of poems, lots of postcards. Playful or serious, depending on the picture. The stakes are low, the audience is a single person, so I feel free to make up spontaneous poems — some good, some terrible. Last year I came upon a series of pregnancy images and composed little poems to go with each. Good ones. Later I combined several of the poems and edited them into a longer poem. These are images of 3 of the postcards.

bust-out photo by Anouk van Marsberger
silhouette photo by kalhh
belly baring photo by Patou Ricard

Hear me: 

Bell-bottom Jeans

 

Bell-bottom Jeans

At a suburban garage sale
on a wobbly table among lava lamps
I find bell-bottom jeans, one pair,
lovingly patched.  
Peace, brother, the ancient man says
as he pockets my single dollar.

Never in that style mood,  
I store them like an old photo,
mellow in my closet.
A quiet vibe, these threads.

Until my daughter
discovers, wears the jeans
as a hippie Halloween costume
to a high school dance and looks great.
Absolutely great.
Groovy! she shouts.

Now may her children find.
May peace endure
like pants.
Patch. Love. Dance.

……

First published in Monterey Poetry Review. Thank you Dr. Jennifer Lagier Fellguth, editor.

A big thank you to Katie Col — with love and dance — for creating the painting at my request for this poem. 

Hear me: 

A shabby old woman grows bristlecone pines

 

A shabby old woman 

grows bristlecone pines 
as house plants, 
drops little seeds 
into paper cups 
with harsh soil 
from Sierra mountainside.

Sunburnt seedlings frosted, parched, 
she neglects for weeks fitting nature’s plan, 
her windowsill a forest growing 
with the speed of centuries.

Her bedroom is cramped. Her love, prickly. 
She remembers wooly mammoths, 
survived asteroids. She gets angry 
if you suggest orchids. The landlord 
wants her out, wants to build condos, 
turns up the heat. 

In cups her love grows
for grandchildren to transplant 
in faraway years, unfriendly soil, 
to ever struggle, never thrive.
Please, may they survive.

……

First published in Amsterdam Quarterly. Thank you Bryan R Monte, editor
Photo by Rick Goldwaser

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