Alone
Sister
You’re like my sister.
You’ll never be alone.
Mother
You’re my god-mother.
You’ll never be alone.
Daughter
You girls have grown together.
You’ll never be alone.
Alone
They’ve all forgotten.
And now I am alone.
time
runs away
never stops
I yield to it, as it’s the only option
moments can be the stuff of brilliance
but isn’t it the longevity of years which produces greatness
unsure, I plod along the hours
wishing I could indulge in rest
sit, take something in
yet I am wound like a clock
and promise myself if I only continue
something good will come
What will we build
as this place crumbles?
How do we repair
when we only wield hammers?
Replacing shattered panes
is an act of trust.
We divide our common space
into smaller rooms,
then spend the days
pounding on the walls.
Can we build with hope
while we buttress our fears?
Will we pass down a place
our descendants must abandon?
breaking like glass
skin hitting gravel roads
summer lightning lingers
holding memories hostage
struggle to pick words
stumble in the microphone
cluelessly reminicing again
spirit begging for this town
around the bend
Roses and lilies
Bouqueted
In figure eights
And pirouettes
Swaying, swaying
And circling
Music drums into bass
And blossoms
Shimmy to grass
And sigh
600 ccs
of blood, loose in her belly.
Errant zygote is
killing her. Doctor
stuck consulting a lawyer
takes 9 hours to
even begin to
save her life – to ensure they
aren’t arrested.
Eleven thirty
pm, June the twenty-fifth
in a trigger state.
She could be someone
you know, someone you love, she
might not have even
known when she woke that
morning, ectopic cells would
rupture tubing, leave
her at death’s door. That
six hundred ccs? Equals
twenty ounces, more
than a pint – pressing
distending, drowning organs
unabated pain.
Six weeks “pregnant” is
two weeks late. I was that once.
My blood? It came, the
usual way. I
won’t be quiet, while those with
working uteri
fall dead. And they will.
And they have. And they will. And
they have. And they will.
My Courtyard Window
opens to American Sycamore molted-gray branches
flush with pale-green serrated leaves stretched
beyond my fifth-floor walk-up.
American Tree Sparrows toss teel-wit teedle-eet
back & forth. I think of Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window,
only I have no binoculars.
My hazel 20-20’s pan 180 degrees, past wide-open
windows, & watch twilight disappear. Trumpet scales
sun-splotched Brooklyn red-brick sunrise,
teases interior movement. 4th floor window’s clothesline cranks
private to public space, flaps personality. Paint-stained
carpenter jeans, turned inside out so pockets dry, multi-task
in my imagination: hourly-wage earner by day/color-bubbled
graffiti artist by night. White-bleached, mended sheets sag
the middle, & socks, one missing, off-balance
the ends. 2nd floor window frames a snowy-haired, canary-yellow
t-shirted man. He leans full-torso out & calls a baritone-rich Hola
to passersby below.
He keeps faithful watch, misses no one. Mid-day, a groceries-bearing
octogenarian waves him Nǐ hǎo & bump-thuds her cart
up three flights of stairs.
In the cool of evening, gastronomic geography draws me to window perch:
sweet yeasty aroma of babka, onions sautéed with garlic, slow-cooked frijoles,
& bucatini con le sarde, oregano/rosemary tanged.
Trumpeter circular-breathes lip trills, clean & smooth sorrow-laced
lows bridged high, our nocturne:
Halleluiah
Boiling granite countertop.
A bottle of Four Roses asks me
Burrito bar napkin,
I vent to you.
I always thought it odd
that the wages of sin should be death:
that bad would pay a wage at all
or one would be rewarded for doing
something well with such a punishment.
It was only recently I looked up the phrase,
after the point at which I had become educated–-
“stipendia enim peccati mors gratia”
and it occurred to me that, while true
it could be payment or a stipend, it might
as equally be a tribute, impost or tax.
What, then, changes? Does the direction
of the flow of money matter at all? And
exactly who is the employer here, or
who says this is correct amount of tax
to be collected? Has anyone called OSHA?
Don’t we now have Fair Labor Relations Act?
What of all those who died impeccably—what
justice is that? But I stopped all this questioning
and laughed at the simple thought that
the wages of sin could as readily be
a sin tax.
