Category Archives: poetry

February (for my old dog)

I’ve got a cat in my arms here trying to help me post to this blog (she is not all that helpful)! It makes me miss all those animals who kept me company over the years, especially one little dog:

February

The night before, the ice fell in sheets from the sky and I was a child.
But in the morning
I awoke to sun that glistened and glowed and melted
the way out.

I skated in circles through my parent’s house,
frantic to pack my life into trash bags and move on.

She sat curled in the snow, watching me.
She shivered skinny from not eating.
We should have carried her back inside but
we were all so busy moving those trash bags.

In that still winter quiet, in her favorite month,
I went out to her.
I crouched down to touch her face.
I said goodbye, turned to leave.

When the melted ice froze that night,
I was in a white lonely place that smelled of new carpet.

She dreamed of snow on her tongue.
She was waiting for her old dogs to finally
take her home.

Gloss

Gloss

If I was the woman
in the gas station convenience store
sweeping up the dead leaves,
cigarette butts, dirt
and bugs that accumulate over the week,
what shade of lipstick would I wear?
Deep red to surprise
those drifting passerbys
who assume by my oversized dressings that I’ve grown too tired for
movie star dreams;
Or a softly generic pink
to match the slight flush in my cheeks
from the new cold breezes and the faded wall shades
and the dullness of simple chores;
Or just a gloss,
barely discernible to all but me…

Yes, with the gloss I imagine that
every time my tongue reached out in habit,
I would taste a faint stickiness of strawberry flavoring
And smile inside.

Saturday Night Turned Sunday

Saturday Night Turned Sunday

In that ether
of day to night to day, you twisted into
my bones with a quiet embrace
while candles burned out
their existence in the corner, flickering
their shadowy tongues on the ceiling.

Earlier,
we were mouths pressed to Jamaican cigars.
Our voices drifting towards a lone street light
while our lips smacked with red wine.

Later, there was the
reaching out; the touching that sent shivers
through my thoughts and made loud promises like a
bright neon skyline, or a half smile.

The next day, though,
found resigned whispers from the ceiling fan,
soft morning light through the blinds,
impressions of lips on empty water glasses,

and a hand slipping hopelessly away.

Benson’s Market (Then and Now)

This morning, decided to explore some Baltimore-themed pieces…. Started with Charles (who I haven’t seen at President/Lombard in a looong time) and working my way down to Benson’s Market on Eastern….The city is constantly on my mind.

Benson’s Market (Then)

Sun glare off the wet pavement, I squint
and can see the wrinkled man,
worn white shoes, making his way
out the door of Benson’s Market on Eastern.
He has a brown bag and a cup of coffee
steaming, just like the Baltimore humidity.

He stands balancing his breakfast and
says words to a woman in a flowered housedress,
gray hair upswept high,
reminding me of a bird house that
used to sit empty in the very back of
our neighbor’s yard, except that one was green.

The light changes
and my tires greet the asphalt like
a quick handshake. The man is in my rearview,
walking up towards Patterson Park.
Another, much older, sits in an outdoor lounge chair,
thin legs crossed, watching him go.

Benson’s Market grows small;
diminishing in view the
blue and white checkered storefront and
a sign that says cordially,
bread eggs milk,
for your convenience, open 7 days.

Ahead of me the pigeons who sleep
soundly above the old Ukrainian Youth Center
have woken up
and flown.

Benson’s Market (Now)

Those must have been ghosts
I saw
When we last spoke.
Because the market blinds
Are torn
And cling to bits of dust and darkness
Like I sometimes do
To my tenuous memories.

No one has entered that door
With a ding
Of welcome in many years.

Who were those men that I saw, with
Their steaming cups of coffee
Their bread,
Their milk?
Who were those women
Talking of birds outside the blue-checkered front
That now
Seems so forlorn?

The streets aren’t quiet and peaceful.
The people sit
Empty waiting for the bus
By the Burger King.

Charles

Charles

A prophet
preaches in front of the scratched
hood of my car.
He is hidden beneath baseball cap,
and a suit of dark wool
too big for his slight bones.
His head is bowed beneath
the weight of a necklace
of trinkets only he understands.
The heat visibly surrounds
his dry and marbled outstretched hands,
but he does not sweat.

He speaks—
prophecies and ancient secrets
that are absolved
into the Baltimore humidity
without
any recompense. Without any
baptized soul
noticing.

My Regrets to Leary

My Regrets to Leary:

Listen, the streets are quiet and
the news anchor lies about his whereabouts.
He is the naked enemy
beside me who is a pathological liar,
and tells me my name is
first lady and that I am a spider.

He told
of your delusions and the daisies
behind your ears.
No one believes in flowers in guns,
or kool aid optimism.
It is now a numbing vein,
a forgetting, a
tuning out, a
looking away, listless.

When the lights come on,
I scurry
into a dirty hole like my
other vacant eye socket friends.

When the lights go off,
I spin a regal blanket for us and stroke the
mustache of my enemy while he sleeps.

Kendall

Seems I can’t stay away tonight! I was going back through some of my older pieces and found one that was near and dear. Written way back in a creative writing class in college….[Thank you Glaser]

Kendall

Sitting with you,
sand creeping up and over
salty legs and arms
fresh from a chilly swim,
and our skin prickling under
warm yellow rays of light

We decided to build.

And you shoveled and I dug
and we piled sand
grain after grain
into a dinosaur
with white seashell teeth
and a tuft of seaweed hair.

I looked up and
your blue eyes were laughing;
he certainly wasn’t scary
the way real monsters were.
The ones that stomp you down
and bite real hard,
teeth stained with blood.

He was funny and he was good.

So we were horrified
when a gang of little boys
rolling in like a summer storm
ran over him, all thunder and lightning
never once looking back
to see their destruction.

We screamed
and threw sand grenades
and tried to run after them
but our moms yelled, “sit down”
imagining themselves seashore queens
in sunken sand chair thrones.

And for the first time,
two little sand crabs
in the afternoon shining red
felt loss, simple yet deep,
before running off into ocean waves,
the dino swallowed by sea foam.

And now tonight without you
I walk this same beach lost,
clasping my hands for warmth,
feeling sand and those memories like a desert
cold without sun, buried in moonlight.

Then suddenly
a wave crashes over my toes and
my sandy hands take yours again
and I dream us walking hand in hand
salt wrapped in our hair,
our tan skin tingling.

(RIP little boo, Kendall Burrows, May 31, 1996)

Skyline Relief in a Passing Train

Skyline Relief in a Passing Train

I see the New York City skyline
Drenched in early morning orange,
Etched like a relief
In the side of a passing train,
Roaring beside my own.

The light washes over buildings and smoke stacks
And that in-between land of tall weeds from city
to reflection in train.

We just left and already it seems so far, already
My memory of a fat hazy moon
On 12th west side, is a dream.
Is this possible?
The full moon brings possibilities – he seemed
(In my dreamy stroll)
To smile down on me between those buildings
With a blessing.

E. B. White speaks of New York City so compellingly—
I’m willing, when I read it,
To run for the solitude and ferment
He describes
And now and now, opportunities
And possibilities,
Bursting at the seams, yet tempered with
The heavy
Weighty sadness of leaving
Home.

Which ancestors will aid in my decision?
Is this my will or
Is it my great aunt Alice who swore she was too afraid to try?
Or my great grandmother Alice who was (from her poems)
a wife and mother first?

Or my father, who stayed in Baltimore? Although in this instance,
I need only ask, “Daddy, what should I do?”

Crossing in click-clack, the trains pass each other by,
The crossroads clearly defined.

Rio

The more I sit here (trying to “work”), the more I day-dream back to those beautiful beaches in Ipanema…. A taste for you:

Rio

We left the airport to stay another night. Pedro made the tear and
it began.

It began under my tongue and bitter.
It began with foaming waves and coconut water,
all in moving melted samba.

For unknown hours we tasted the night unfold:

Wild with eyes wide, seeing the night as cats do,
we scratched the underbelly of the city, that dog—
the main streets littered with impudent debauchery, the back streets
littered with impudent poor. We graffiti artists,
my foreign eyes like a Pollack on the skyline.

For unknown hours we were the universe and
Rio was the star matter, the dust, the space, the
alpha and omega. Then, oh,

A breeze, a walk, a bed,

and sandy feet lying hot with Pedro.
My body buzzed; my eyes darting around the lights.
Outside the moon howled low and full around the Cristo.
Inside the breathing sounded like an animal alive,
so steady it stalked, up and down.

In minutes, we were bathed in the smallest
sliver of light forcing through the blinds.
We fed our grumbling bodies with ham and cheese and coffee.

Outside the streets burst busy with the day—
the buses snorted; the waves slithered.

winter sun

From my great-grandmother Alice B. Johnson (as published in “Where Children Live” (1958))… for a morning where I was woken by the icy resistance and give way scrape, boot crunching ritual of car cleaning before work…

Winter Sun

The winter sun is bright,
Though winds blow loud and shrill,
And plants grow tall and green
Upon the window sill.

It is as if their leaves,
Forgetting winter’s chill,
Lean toward the warmth of the sun,
Remembering summer still.