Rich folks keep their teeth until late in life.                        
                            “Rich Folks, Poor Folks, and Neither” Jim Harrison  

with a mouth three teeth short of a box of Chicklets™
I lean on the dental school’s emergency clinic.
I sit agape below scrutiny and a surgical light.
Faculty says, “Consistent care…”
but they don’t tell me how I’d pay.

I ask about any studies;
they shake their masked heads.  
My mouth wanes, never waxes.
Two more speciments cry for unaffordable care.
Five years between visits yet no tartar.
I baffle them — my anomalous mouth confuses experts.  

“Brush your tongue,” they say.
Of course, I brush my tongue.
How else could my poems come out?

He went AWOL
one night.  Left us
a dead mouse
on the deck —
didn’t want 
anyone to think
he’d forgotten
where he lives.

So we stapeled
plastic netting
over all the spaces
between the posts.

See how long
it takes him
to figure that out.

For Wisława Szymborska and Richard Drew

I huddled on the floor before the television set
Safe in Kentucky
Weeping
Bearing witness until my husband turned off the broadcast
The falling
                    bodies
                                burned
                                            into my retinas
Heart aching for lessons not learned

In the room with slanted walls everything falls
Apart, not at the corners as prophesied by our holy text,
The instruction manual, but like clouds
Tugged from a dandelion.
That’s why you have to hold yourself Together.
Glue doesn’t determine
The rupture, the prolonged disassembly.  

I know it’s not the room
I walked Into, but that’s ok: coordinates shift
At the drop of a mask—from anhedonia
To balmy psychotropics.  
The Pain Killer stalks the halls
Armed with muzzles and maps to nowhere,
Encapsulated bliss;

It knows no art, just numbers,
Unpeeling zeroes from hundreds,
The room’s contours dissolve number
And number as new claims are staked,
Furniture plucked away one-by-one to star
In pawn shop windows and new rooms out-of-context..

i love you

with no strings attached

no conditions or fine print

just my heart beating blushes

I was brought up to believe that the
USA was the melting pot
And that pot included ALL of us

What will become of us
The US

Have we forgotten

“United WE Stand                                   Divided WE Fall”  

They forgot

WE

Means EVERYONE
Not only your party members
Or yes-men
Drunk on orange Kool-Aid
Living in an altered reality
With a king
Where court is held
But no one is held accountable

WE

Includes All our neighbors

No matter
Color
Sexual orientation
Religion
Ethnicity
Pronoun

It takes ALL of us
To hold America together

All for one 
One for All

Or we will            ALL
FALL!          

Fortune cookies
remind me of my youth.
But the fortune cookie
fairy has been aloof.

Or maybe the fortune
master has taken a break
because I only get comments;
must be a mistake.

Although this has gone on
far too long.
I don’t like the comments
It seems all wrong.

Where is my fortune
that I hold dear?
No comments, I say,
do I make myself clear!

ever i stress in monotonous serotiny

wound me and words fly out my lips

set fire to my hips and i seed into the winds of mange

thrush-loined i labor painful at the word processor

where i must bud out ideas in polypian prose

i sow my wild notes, grow my epigrammata

i flesh out the baby fat of a lardy theme or leitmotif

with neither midwife nor epidural

and lest i miscarry or typo

to the Muses and Eileithyia i pray

make my issue

Caesarean as the Bard

seminal as Angelou

lick viscera and cholic from my newborn’s brow

o olympian maidens, mount my sermon and sire me one decent poem to deliver to the masses

East Village
St. Marks Place
early 1970’s
time to move
Leaving New York City
Unimaginable
iike choosing
a part of you
to die

But
circumstances
prevailed
One box
at a time
down
the stairs
a fireline of one
I go back for more
again and again
on a loop
stacking them
on the landing
outside

The promised
Van
arrives
for departure
to Baltimore
Yet,
not until
the move
was done
did I discover
my box of
Dreams
had been
stolen

candlewax and colder months
can’t go back to where i’m from
take me with you into sleep

sinners packed in like sardines
birtbday boys in brand new jeans
lord i pray my soul to keep

don’t forget the golden rule
maybe once in middle school
if you run you won’t get far

when you touch me god is there
hallelujahs in your hair
you can show me who you are