Posts for June 2, 2021 (page 4)

I took the sun for a stroll,
bare feet pollinating with the lint from ornery houseshoes
as evidence, as repentance;
soles steeled to a dense crust
since June, her heat, and cancered bones
respited for eternity,
leaving me with unbleached linoleum,
a cheese experiment, and hangnails for hire.

I’d promised the chunked mud a week’s reprieve
from my shifty gait and tight tears;
granted it FMLA for torsioned pesticide grasses
and breath stolen from drop-dead bees.

I let the pavement file the gray and marigold calluses,
weaving the timbre of our wedding song over my tongue
between the dewy brush of the block’s evergreens.

The concrete croons its cracks with obituaries.

I’ve cheated and outlived our fifth cicada season.
I kick the molt skins to avenge your old squeamish curiosity
grinding them with my big toe,
their husks are flour like chapulines molidos
but grayer, hollow tombs, the wet flesh abandoned.

The lap home feels like another batch of your burnt caramel,
acrid familiarity and bittersweet smoke,
a puffy breeze from a kitchen towel dabbing at your eyes
before it’s wrung together and snapped at my behind.
I stifle my laughter with the syrup of your frustrated tears.

I reconvene with a salted saccharine;
our saffron porch is a desolate mosaic:
withered garden, cracked gnome,
unhinged house numbers.
My ears itch,
maybe you’re gossiping about me,
maybe I have my own sour tears to stew in alone.

I long for a grandchild-illustrator, a seer,
who could chalk graffiti our driveway
with mauve tulips and smiley junebugs,
capture a belly laugh to make the mangoes sweet again,
to brighten me and solitude’s graphite portrait on this porch swing
where you lulled me with your Parisian and Bluegrass dreams.

My leady ligaments sloth to our bedroom,
the wet drag of sullied feet against sticky floors
burdening each stubborn muscle.

I lie in your empty imprint on our tired mattress,
agridulce vinaigrette of my sweat and your kissed tears
caressing taut cracked lips; flimsy breaths
welcoming the weight and heat of your pout.
You tangle into every invasive root within me
sipping the last breath from my body.

Two soaks really,
one hot, one not.
Started in my lover’s
luxurious tub, lavender
Epsom salts, a Sunday
acrostic from the Times,
sipping water and porter
as needed.

Back home in the morning
to a lovely all-day soaker
from the sky, one last chance
to extract, root and all,
quarter-inch maples
and dinnerplate dandelions.

Best of all,
as we city gardeners say,
a rainy day keeps
the mowers away.

I save my tears for rainy days

The subtle drops used as my excuse

I save a beautiful song for rainy days

It sings with the taps on my windshield

I soak my shoes on rainy days

The dew-filled puddles screaming my name

I dance on rainy days

The friction of my feet flow with the wet grass

I embrace rainy days for what they are

They’re my break time,

My hiding under the covers,

My long shower,

My sleeping in,

Time to unwind.

And they give me an extra reason

To appreciate the sun,

When she comes back

when a nine-year-old
cannot recall her mother’s face
the shape of it
the smell of it
the softness of it  

when a nine-year-old
cannot recall her mother’s voice
the pitch of it
the pentatonic of it
the passing tone of it  

when a nine-year-old
cannot recall her mother’s body
to shield her
from the one
she is now to call mama       

***The title of this poem is a line from Lucille Clifton’s poem Memory

how I feel, compared

the boy on the bike
he let go of the handle bars
nearly toppled
yet smiled at me when he caught himself and I said
be careful

a big, summertime smile and I remembered

joy
how often do I forget
or worse yet, ignore
instead of letting it override
I can make it my priority
my choice

just like he did, as he rode around the track

a. 

i’m in that space of feeling restless but
have no place to go but i can’t
sit still and maybe if i could sleep
but i’m too wide awake and
i’d like a good cry but the lump
isn’t hard enough and i should
talk it out but i don’t know what i’m 
feeling and i’d like to escape except
i don’t escape like that anymore
so i’ll just sit here and try not 
to think HA like that works 
i don’t like this inbetweenspace
of nothing is right nothing is wrong
and i’m trying to outrun the racing
thoughts or trying find feelings
when i just want to be numb

maybe a little mustard
all of it
oozing
down the side of your face
while you reach for a napkin
a second too late
in a crowd murmuring
from a thousand point of focus
around a field manicured
to the smallest stitch of grass
kiss cam
home run
seventh inning stretch
you look at me sideways
and can’t help but laugh
in this summer
that is ours
while it lasts. 

It was my wife-to-be-in-forty-years

who turned me off of writing poems.

Well, not her

exactly.

More like the aftershock—

Wait! Should I say fallout? Is fallout better?

—of…

Ok.

It’s like this.

My wife-to-be-in-forty-years

submitted a poem

to some-small-press-or-other

containing the lines—

And I’m quoting here so cut me a little slack goddamnit will ya’?

—containing the lines

“I’m hurting myself a lot

I’m wanting to be held again

Harry, remember Harry?

         said there are in fact lots of people with

         qualities like yours

         like you

After such kindness, that would be a dismal thing to do”

and in the letter of rejection—

Sorry, did I say letter?

—in the

envelope

of

rejection

was nothing but her poem with some scribbles in the margins

and, of course,

as if it were an active verb,

the circled word

“reject”

and,

too,

there was a scribbled note that simply read

“who’s Harry? why not Bill?”

and then she started crying

and hurt herself again

and I stopped writing.

Not sure why.

And now it’s now and now we’re married,

our consummation forced on us

by lawyers and insurance men

who could not bring themselves to see

what she and I have known for decades.

I bring this up at all

not because of Harry

or rejection either

but because she’s brought me—

Dare I say it save it’s up there in the title?

—because now she’s brought me Kevin.

Details find me in little 
moments when I’m
feeding the dog or
taking out compost.

I pause 

and they flood into my 
imagination, a tsunami
overtaking my senses
sending me backward
to precise pinpoints in time

when you were still alive, 
when the kids were still little, 
when we had the big
tree in our yard,
when I was a kid,
when we walked through
town holding hands,
when the world felt simpler
and I didn’t know we were
all burning with resources
we forget are finite.

I pause

and for a moment
it all makes sense again,
or it doesn’t and I spiral
into depression on the couch
for hours or days until
I remember
there’s no one else to
do the laundry.