Just sayin’

 

Just sayin’

You sure you want a prince?
Actually, dragons are hardworking,
faithful and honest, long term.
Maybe not so good-looking but
it takes skill to breathe all that fire.
He keeps the house warm.
The kids can bounce on his tail.
Prince Charming is an idiot.
Look at all the great women he ignores
while out chasing dragons.

……

From my book Random Saints
First published in Dove Tales

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Zoology: A Case Study

 

Zoology: A Case Study

See the soft soul
of one chiseled girl
in a vast city, Baltimore,
surreptitiously tipping books
to learn of ovary, sperm, egg,
singing in the Episcopal choir.

Her beauty is her enemy.
She escapes the choirmaster
to a public school staying late to peer
through the one and only microscope,
pursued by boys, men,
watching cells replicate, grow
feeling twin passion
a brain for science, a womb for womanhood.

A chance for university, scholarship
encouraged by a father of no education.
In the Great Depression she boards the train
for biology as a discovery, not a trap.

Sixteen years in St. Louis at a microscope
over Drosophila chromosomes,
a woman in a man’s lab.
All the good men go to war.
A professor steals credit.

Half starved, doctorate achieved,
Japan radioactive,
love unleashed,
last egg saved.
I’m born.

……

First published in Amsterdam Quarterly —thank you Bryan R. Monte, editor.
The photo is of my mom labeled “Embryology Lab 1934.”

This poem is currently published with a lovely presentation in Silver Birch Press—many thanks to editor Melanie.

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Redhead

 

Redhead

Of grandmas great-great
each child has eight,  
that’s how the tree spreads,
but this one of yours, dear girl,
in sepia photo with posture like steel
steamed to America at age fourteen,
married the coal-haired sailor who asked
Who set your head on fire?
Who froze the flame?

Her inky-haired daughter, your great grandma
with steely drive in the Great Depression
worked her way through university
studying ornithology
while raising crow-haired children.

Her youngest son wandered to California,
your grandpa bearded in sable
paired up with a steamy woman of Afro top
back to the land raising illegal crop,
then to legal vines, stable life.

Their daughter, your brunette mother
of dusky skin and choir voice,
a singing crusader for choice
wed to an organic farmer
who looks like a smiling porcupine.

But you, dear girl, dear niece,
dear sweet amazing pumpkin
with eyes of steel,
Who set your head on fire?
Who froze the flame?

……

First published in Amsterdam Quarterly —thank you Bryan R. Monte, editor
Photo by Oleg Osadchuk

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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so many words

 

so many words
I have wasted
but the best
shall endure

peace
    birth
        I love you

……

photo by Wildschuetz

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