January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Emergency Room
The receptionist is calm.
An old woman
is trying to vomit
behind a figured curtain.
A white wimpled nun
slides by
automatic door
closes without sound
against rubber bumpers.
Squeal of burned baby
rises to dog whistle soundlessness
behind another curtain.
Two security guards in tight Hessian blue,
pistols on hips,
walk around a supine third
who lies,
chest bare black against white bandages,
on cold chrome trolley
for x-rays.
It is 12:32 A. M.
and the doctor is explaining test results
to the ear
of a beige push-button phone.
Pain sits in straight-backed chairs,
crouches on couch cushions,
holds its guts
before ambulance entrance,
raves in a draped alcove,
waits to vanish
one way or another.
Explorer
The man who had never eaten spaghetti,
hard to believe,
of course,
was nevertheless eager to try.
“How do you do it?” he said
to anyone willing to answer.
Ordinary to some,
it looked formidable to him,
strings coiled in whiteness
with blood sauce
like a tangle of tape worms.
Someone said around a smile,
wrap it in the tines,
twirl it to submission.
Cut it,
end to end,
another friend suggested
or just
suck it up.
Dog History
There is only pavement here.
Odors float, invisible cirrus,
from weeds in cracks
between stones or from dried urine
disappearing except to dog’s scent.
No dog is naked, although
unclothed they present
buttocks to the sun
and consider genitalia
of chance acquaintances.
Without past, each writes
present with raised leg
or natural squat tickled
by grass or capricious winds.
No heaven waits perfection of dogs
but other dogs
sniffing, running, eating.
January 2011 | back-issues, fiction
Shirley tells me that she once owned a horse that won the Kentucky Derby.
She says she had a doe living inside her house for two years until her husband said she had to let it go.
She says that after the deer peed on her throw rug she spanked it and it never messed in the house again.
Shirley says that her dog, Little One, is a beagle and that her five other dogs hate
Little One because she gets to lay on the davenport.
Shirley says she owns 19 sets of dishes and had to count each plate and bowl after her house had been broken into last year.
The thief had taken only guns, she says, 300 guns.
After her husband’s surgery, Shirley tries to kiss the heart surgeon on the mouth.
I sit next to Shirley in a hospital waiting room while doctors scrape from my wife’s womb our third attempt at parenthood.
Who can cry when a 70-year old woman is leaning in, spinning tales, yanking sleeves?
When Shirley says that she won three million dollars in a Coke bottle cap game but that she forgot her wallet at home and asks me to buy her two lunches in the cafeteria, I say sure.
There will be time for crying later.
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
New Somalia
Wherever she walks
that is Mogadishu.
Her ruby-colored veil cascades to her knees.
Her posture is not left to nature’s vices
like these impressionable
sidewalk-tamed and -framed trees.
The crosswalk blushes beneath her feet
for she weaves a red carpet out of its common,
striped concrete and, as she glides past,
cars stand at attention on the street,
giving her all but a military salute.
As she forges ahead, resolute as a general,
the mind conjures the flourish of a trumpet
and a desert wind is felt, carried inexplicably
upon an ocean breeze. Meanwhile,
seagulls on curved lampposts sit still
and the second-story dentist looks on,
mesmerized, at his window sill.
The traffic light gives green cards
but not all take off at once.
Somalia, for one, is still learning the roads
but she is with strength and drive replete.
I do not worry about her, that Somalia,
for, though she comes as a surprise to this town,
this town doesn’t surprise her in the least.
the (snow) globe
an arab who looked up to the west
until she looked it up
got the rundown
got run down
now looking up at stars
a female under males
trying to understand them
trying to get around them
without getting around
an american idolizing
the rising sun
but damning its horizon
a zealot searching for absolutes
in a chain reaction
a civilian hoping her soldier
will not be killed
by friendly fire
his memory steeped, dyed
in cold blood
people building up walls
walls tearing people down
human aliens invading
old stereotypes gracefully aging
actors without stages staging protests
picket lines shouting for an audience
lines of itinerant workers
for hire
and hopes for higher wages
falling to the ground
foreigners working as domestics
brown eyes becoming statistics
children whose existence
is resistance
unsympathetic weather
unnatural disasters
parents beating each other to pieces
trying to stay together
a family dilating and constricting
as the light comes out a rainbow
a human trying to be humane
a predator climbing down
the food chain
a storeowner resisting a window sale
a dog chasing after its own tail
an independent girl
still a dependent
a prisoner escaping
to confinement
a misguided man who considers
all but himself lost
another religiously secular
an atheist who wants to believe again
but has forgotten how
a virgin who always chastens herself
but wants to do it now
a millionaire who flies coach
a poor man with a porche
a liberal with a crocodile purse
a mercenary unattractive nurse
innumerable iterations of 0 and 1
wars both peoples lost
ones both countries won
ignoble nobel laureates
a disunited united nations
an inoperative surgeon
leading countless operations
sky rises raising eyebrows
not standards of living
and standards waving
over double-parked cars
over double-doubles
over double standards
i stand sometimes looking
at this small curious world
in a snow globe
sometimes
in the snow globe
looking out
curiously
at the world
Epitaph
I didn’t know what to do, at first,
with their last remains
so I lined them shoulder to shoulder
and ran over the bodies.
If burning a book is sacrilege, then what of human flesh?
If burying is cruel in life, how much more in death?
This way they’ll not repel the eye should they be unearthed.
This way not gods but simple men will trigger their rebirth,
and if a chance puff of dust tempts from you a sneeze,
it’ll be a comfort to know that those weren’t arms and knees.
So bury the urn and burn the blasted coffin.
I want to be the death of a few hundred trees;
I want to be a character in your memories.
