Category Archives: poem

ghosts at church point (at st. mary’s college of maryland)

Justin lays frozen
beneath a pile of oyster shells
on the slope of the hill
at the edge of the old graveyard behind
Calvert Hall and the church.
I press my hand
on the cold metal of his name and
continue the walk down gravel
to the frozen river, the shore dressed in white.

At the end, a tall wooden cross
guards the river. I lean against it,
steamy puffs of air rising
up with each shallow breath,
one gloved hand splintering wood.
I hear birds flapping their wings and water
clicking and clacking in a strained attempt
at escape. There, the frozen horizon; it
stretches far beyond my sight.

Spread wide, my arms north and south,
face pale and cold, cheeks ruddy
from light river breezes.
The songs of the Sunday
church choir come floating in my brain,
the ghosts on the hill with
their soft waves of whispers. I walk
closer to the water; I am now
closer to that compelling
that led Justin quiet from this life.

(Rip, Justin, April 30, 2001)

Goodbye Sassy Cat

Seriously all over the place today, thinking about mortality in all ways. My parents got me a grey cat for my 11th birthday. She was the best~ and now, age 19, she is gone. For those animal lovers out there, you know how I’m feeling. Thinking all sorts of things. It is the end of an era. Goodbye Sassy cat.

Writing an Obituary

It is a clinical process:
I take the facts and look at them in their structure,
their organization.
I try to remember newspaper etiquette and to
include full name, date of birth,
date of death,
names of family who are left; names of family who are gone.

I am part of those still here, made especially clear
as I sit typing.
I am alone with my syntax; I am alone with
my gift for turning a phrase or placing a comma.
It is not enough.

feeling careless (wine in the bathtub)

In my bathtub
legs have to bend
under the bubbles
smelling of lavender and vanilla
and fading fast; faster
they float off on some
imaginary breeze
when my fingers skim the surface
and make ripples in the
fading chalky streams of soap.

My head rests on pale
yellow tiles and my one arm
lazily sinks
while the other tips a large
red wine glass full
of tannins and aged oak
and hints of spice and vanilla
to relax the
fading chalky streams of soap.

I finish the wine,
crumple my body,
sink my head
under
water
till it spills over the sides
onto a canary yellow bath rug.

Pine in Bryce Canyon (and i’m back from Jamaica)

Back from beautiful Jamaica… and I’m not sure how I convinced myself yesterday to get on a plane back to Baltimore after all that sunshine and blue salt water and all the friendly “yeah mon”s… And since I haven’t finished processing it all, I went back to an older poem from an older trip, my cross country trip in 2001.

Pine in Bryce Canyon

Stretched between tall
hoodoos of red sandstone
burning hot beneath summer,
a lone pine stands. Its
roots strong
to the dusty red ground,
and its brown trunk growing
up and up
and its green needles bursting
from their thin branches. It
heaves a light swaying sigh
of being ever green in
all red rock and dust, yet
after all, this pine
still thirsts for blue Utah sky
and gazes up longingly.

Vultures

One more… this one less about Zach, more about the city, how violence is weaved into our consciousness until we believe it is natural, normal, and beyond our control.

Vultures

I peek between blinds dusty
On my fingers, nails,
Black with dirt; I watch through slits
The blood from kick after kick
A head on a curb, dirty with
City grime and lost hope and fury.
A body curled fetal around a tire
Desperate to stop the pain.

I close the blinds
With a quick clip of my fingers,
Flip my cell and make an anonymous call.
I sit on a ratty couch and drink
A cheap beer and think of the time
I saw a vulture
Eat the eye of a dead sea turtle,
the smell forcing my eyes
To take another direction and leave the bird
Alone with its dinner.

Spaghetti (Christmas Tradition at Chipparrelli’s)

In the dim light of Chipparelli’s restaurant
tucked in a busy corner of Little Italy,
we sit at a small table,
red tablecloth with white cloth napkins,
and a warm glowing candle,
reflecting in silver forks, knives, spoons,
another year of family tradition.

I realize that my parents are just
a man and a woman. Two people
with past lives and younger faces.
They retell a story
and I can see vividly their first date:
my dad with two plates of spaghetti
he worked so hard to make
for my mom waiting patiently
in their private Italian restaurant
and that sudden slight nervous trip
to send both dinners straight
to the shag carpet with a splat.

We pass the fresh baked bread.
My dad dives into his usual lasagna,
and my mom begins her usual manicotti,
and I turn in my spaghetti for
some exotic dish I’ve never heard of.

I twirl my pasta.
Before me, my parents, two souls I love.
Before them, a little girl in pigtails
drinking Chianti.

Dead-end Street

Collapsing darkness,
the kind that singes like a dying cigarette.
Orange
streetlights
smoldering
at the end of the block
in a city that seems to have eyes in the back of
its scheming
hard head. It has plans for you—

Did you ever think that
you, that effervescent infectious
set of arms and legs, those
legs that go
on
and on,
could be here? In a back alley,
where rats crawl
and sirens slowly drown your voice.

Hush without pity, touch gently
the wall, another brick in
ephemeral
hope;
only the rats escape with
a snitch and a rotten crumb
of gouda that
your neighbor no longer wanted.
There is no succor.

Finding Truth in a Darkroom

Am I the only one who misses film? Settling into the afternoon and thinking how much I miss the surprise of a new roll of film. I found an old roll sitting in my purse this morning, which I think was from a weekend trip to Portland, Maine. I wonder if it is still good? I wonder if there are any places left that will process it? I wonder what our faces will look like if I do get the prints made….

Finding Truth in a Darkroom

My eyes are a
shutter open as the world blurs by
and when I blink,
I capture your face in
black and white clarity—
your scars
etched carefully on film.

Then, if I use the technique
of solarization
I learned many years ago,
your expression can be exposed,
naked print facing forward,
before a flash of light.

Negatives will
become positives
by chance, in chaotic fashion,
meaning
you can’t know exactly
how it will turn out.

At first thought,
the Sabatier effect
may suggest a complete darkening,
a wasted effort,
but no, instead your face appears—
your pupils brightly opposite.

house clean

Nothing quite like the feeling after a long volleyball tournament; ah the aches! Half hour to USA hockey, perfect time to post a poem….

House Clean

When I die
will you go through my things?
Fingering papers
and smudging your fingerprints all over my photos
even though you might remember later
that I hate that.

And making a mess in my kitchen where I
always wished that you were but
you weren’t.

Tossing out this and that; the this and that
that I saved purposefully
all those years.
Hoping to get it all done quickly,
hoping to find
that million dollar antique
that you already know I never had.

Then, in one corner, finding letters,
letters of deep secret
towards
self, family, love;
diaries of thoughts you never knew I had.

Will you throw them out?
Yes. Suddenly, in one moment, I am no longer
who you
want to remember.