I do not understand the society that we live in.
The little girl does her homework
on the dining room table
now her classroom.
The virus has made her housebound, lonely,
aching for companionship other than Cousin Kay,
who stays with her while Mom works.
Missing school despite the playground politics,
papers returned to her scarred with red ink ,
teacher breath reeking of coffee.
She lines up erasers shaped like kittens
and teddy bears and baseballs.
She names them, offers them graham crackers
smeared with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff.
They are her pandemic classmates.
You think they all start the same way.
It’s always the same words, in your eyes,
Made up of the same letters.
You draw a picture made of lines and curves,
That are all the same color.
“All lines begin at a point,” you say,
“Just like everything began at a point.”
A point that exploded into something that became one thousand colors.
And now you sit on your couch,
In your own little corner of the world.
The little mirror on your wall looks like something from Hollywood,
Because there’s a little diamond embedded in the bottom of its frame.
At school, you take a science class,
And you learn about a world that existed long ago, that’s now buried beneath the ground.
It sounds like someone’s fantasy,
But today you see a little piece of its remains,
Glittering in the light.
Your favorite movie plays on the TV in front of you.
The world it depicts is someone’s fantasy,
But part of it is true.
You see a girl standing tall on a stage.
“There will always be another something,” she says,
“Another price, or another gem.
But it’s not a matter of whether there are or aren’t diamonds.
It’s a matter of what each of those diamonds comes to be,
Because each diamond has a different story,
Even if all stories start the same.”
Got to leave for the meeting
at 9:45. Important people
coming to my house at 12:00.
Soup in the crockpot, check.
Salad stuff all cut up last night, check.
Got up early, check.
List in my pocket, check.
Croutons, crusty bread,
a new cucumber to replace
the soggy one I cut up last night, check.
Made it to Walmart at 7:30.
Forgot to make iced tea.
Add that to list, check.
Grab all the stuff, check. Need to
get home, set the table with placemats,
cloth napkins, soup bowls, salad plates,
change clothes, do make-up
and be out the door at 9:45.
Got everything, check, Turn to run
out the door, check. The man I see
all the time looks at me.
Excuse me, he said.
The machine shows…
I forgot to pay!
The picture captures an instant
Federico spoke of the barren Orange Tree,
“the day walks in circles around me”
He said this from the push-pinned sheet
on the wall. I saw light fall at my feet
I looked for my shadow on the ground,
like the man on the merry-go-round
caught in the loop longing for days
he hung on the stoop, dreaming
now caught in the cycle of same, less
fun in the game, no escape from
daily chants of loss and blame
without change it’s all too plain
nowhere bound with the same refrain
atop the painted Palomino, flaking paint
at full gallop, round and round, feeling faint
no one notices the languishing man
the view of colors moving blurry sand
until he steps down from the hive
alone, yet still alive
he is ready to see himself
in poverty or wealth
where
The sun will catch
the shadow of the orange tree
that bears no fruit
(After-poem, inspired by “The Song of the Barren Orange Tree”, Federico Garcia Lorca)
Bald babies plucked like peaches
Their skulls devoid of hair
In their hearts, possibility without compare
These bald babies.
Oh these bald babies
Free of fuzz, of feathered fishtails
and fanned fringes
Seen as song silenced,
not salient, but there is beauty
in a blank canvas
These bald babies.
Oh these bald babies
Undeserved of wigs or wants,
bald babies rock their naked crowns
Their scalps like precious mirror, shine
defying nature—turning heads around.
break the mold with follicles scarce;
a bald baby’s bounty abounds.
A crush on someone,
it’s sweet as orange soda.
It’s not called a “break”
even though
you feel you’re falling apart.
A crush,
the way it squeezes you
and makes you uncomfortable
but still you like it.
I can’t breathe,
I can’t speak when I’m around my
crush.
Heaven and torture when I’m beside my
crush.
The person you ache for but will never hold.
Crush.
What would you give for one night with your
crush?
Would you risk shattering the dream of your
crush?
I feel you watching me, even in the night-black room where I teeter on the choice of keeping myself awake or yielding to the nightmare that pleads for the chance to resume the moment I fall asleep. There for me, protecting me, or so you say, belied by the anger rooted deep in your heart, your mind, burning in those oh so fixed and hungry eyes.
your eyes like a wolf’s
survey me from the wood’s edge
I wait for your pounce
I think we will be smarter when we’re dead.
Obligations neatly folded in a drawer,
no eyes to watch Wheel of Fortune,
no property to shield from Jeopardy.
No bruising fist can kill us – we’ll be dead!
The pressure in our chest will decompress.
Back on earth, our family will be a mess
but we’ll be surprised how fast they forget.
No unpaid bills, no debts to collect.
Life’s albatross no longer wrings our neck.
Forgotten, all the good and bad we chased —
the pain of time and space will be erased.
Love’s so much easier to find, saints say,
when everything else is taken away
