Posts for June 13, 2020 (page 6)

One summer I sold flowers on a street corner.
It was Arizona and the sun converted
the crust from my northern bones
into orange smoothies and halter tops.
I skateboarded in the park
and forgot the language of snow.  

With each bouquet I hawked,
my hair grew blonder and wilder,
the sun a drama queen
turning my skin into a fading
remembrance of winters past
until I owned that street corner.  

Bright carnations and daisies,
a whisper of baby’s breath and fern,
the bundles flew into car windows—
a quick gift for grandma,
husbands hoping to bury mistakes,
hospital errand duties—
impulse buying in a fast food world.  

I lived in a shady apartment
above a thriving jazz club
with Jeannie who read palms
and took her bible to bed,
two windblown transplants
eager for adventure.
We discovered Nina and Billie
and the syncopation of women.  

We hung out with life that summer,
tasted dangers our mothers warned us about,
paving a new path to adulthood
and flourishing in that culture
where even the cactus bloomed,
beautiful and temporary
like dust dancing through sunshine.          

I worried you would get carpal tunnel or arthritis
in those hands that deftly sliced, diced, chopped,
minced as you poured a chiffonade of vegetables
into your soups..

Or as you carved the tasty beef tenderloin
seasoned just right.

Your garde mange of birds sculpted from apples 
and watermelons scooped into baskets amazed me 
along with your tomato roses.

Saws scraping and crushing ice into fish
or flowers or urns to embellish
buffet tables with your art.

Preparing and filling over 
1,000’s of turkey cavities for
huge Thanksgiving banquets.

Your hands survived just fine.

It was the legs that carried you
for 12 hour shifts of standing and
prepping and creating  meals for
many that became your 
Achilles heel.

In the post-truth world where fear threatens
the inner voice, we can’t let go the thread         
                                                                            lest
we all go mad                         
                          can’t let go the thread that winds
back before the beginning of time
                                                              the fulcrum
of the present
in which our lever pivots

a sprout
a bloom
orange squash blossom
swollen fruit
shriveled, burnt 
in the sun

He always collected
Her tears and
Stored them in 
Beautiful glass jars.

She didn’t realize
That one day
He would
Drown her
In that ocean.

From the front row of every reading,
he photographed each writer who took the stage.
In our workshop, his measured comments on a poem
often ended with “This seems like it could go much further.”

His own poems plotted disturbing events in metered stanzas,
to make grief bearable in “Sam’s Hand” or to accumulate
irony in a poem about a boy drowning at a church camp.

His favorite poem was “Abide,” from a posthumous collection
about civil rights martyrs by Jake Adam York, who died at 40.
Jon died at 58, four months after we met.

I remember most his poems
about yanking livers and gizzards out of chickens for KFC.
I could not expect him to go further than that.

A classic refreshing coke

At the cinema

Breakfast club on the big screen

Cigarettes in a parking lot

The star watching above

Laughter fills the air

A disposable captures the moment

and should I

Old Men  

The sun shines bright
on the faces of old men.
Like a mirror
it reflects the youth of their past.  

The warmth radiates
through their souls and
refreshes memories
thought long since gone.  

They sit on benches 
and watch their life as it courses through the sky.
It is an orbit
that lives in their hearts always.  

Then at dusk
when the mirror is dark
they lay down and dream
those same memories
again.  

Tony Sexton 

  Powder Saves the Day    

Fresh powdered scents keep mammas gay.
Talcum tapped on a baby’s bottoms
keep chaffs and diaper rashes away.  

Stinky poops gag shut airways,
a newborn’s gift of blossoms,
but powder scents make mammas gay  

Teen stank ranks up the days,
leaves clothes and skin smelling rotten,
but powder keeps the baying dogs away.  

Rolls, sags and udder-like-bags weigh,
like a wrecked ship’s flotsam,
but powder’s slip-n-slide keep the hefty gay.  

Loose and thwapping lips of a woman gray,
like a day in the land of Sodom,
but powder, without talc, keeps the chaffs at bay.  

The latter year legs don’t splay,
menopause induces desires to boot hims,
powder’s fresh scents make the old smell gay
and the keep the chaffs and rashes away.