Spine by spine
a finger trail meandering
down bookcase alley
each stiff lettered bone
a grave of good words.
The tomes are piled
top to bottom so necks
don’t get twisted and disordered.
No system but time & treasure—
each word, every letter
a barrier against order
to be individually regarded.
My eyes
an automatic detective
my grasp
a trembled reach
my need
an addict’s escape.
1/15 Bitter Cold
I lost the precious sugar maple in the Spring of 2020.
Nothing has been the same since.
The hostas and ferns yearn for his shade
and the juvenile cardinals desire his protection.
As for me, I miss the color he brought to my world.
Who will soften the harsh rain?
Who will quiet the cold winds?
What about the void in the soil?
Of course, here’s a limerick for you:
There once was a cat from Peru,
Who danced in a shiny red shoe.
With a twirl and a spin,
A cheshire-like grin,
And a step that was nimble and true.
I escaped my desk
well into the afternoon-
A poem awaits!
All of my groggy
early morning musings
have evaporated.
I cast about, eat my soup
The placemat! A wordsearch!
Is “poot” a word? or “gaior?”
Better check the list,
must be simpler choices.
Here we are!
The cool side of the pillow
has been harder to find.
My body steams like a radiator,
my bed a heat lamp that no fan
can quench.
True story, and…back to work.
My belligerent belly
boils and bubbles
burbling up bile
like a bullfrog coughing up a blowfly,
a cacophonous melange
of filth and phlegm.
But holy hell y’all,
not even a rollicking romp
through teeming fields
of vocabulary can vanquish
these stones, imagined or otherwise,
which have burrowed their way
into my bowels, my bones,
my blank space,
which is crucial for the production
of properly formed word dumps,
much less sanity.
open
open with ease
remove your shoes, download our new favorite show
move closer to me, don’t forget to take out the trash
would you get me a glass of water? inform my anxieties, peace lives here
rename my last
compress “summer saturdays.PNG”
duplicate week after week
make alias, your name and mine
quick, look… time is swimming past us
do you copy? share your thoughts
the content tag sticks for months
quick actions make a fool of us both
What is it about things?
Keepsakes placed in drawers,
randomly, about the house–
shells, rocks, old buttons–
that you can hold
in your hand and feel:
the smoothness
the ridges
the thinness
the thickness
the edge
of things–
What is it?
That rock found at a creek
near Fuller Lake
when you lived in Pennsylvania
a lifetime ago,
the shell you found in South Carolina,
on a beach with your second husband,
another one–pink abalone on the inside,
darkest blue on the outside, a delicate mussel
from Star Island, pale green and cobalt
beach glass, a chip of heavy China from a ship.
And, that large brown button
that fell off your great aunt’s coat
as she boarded the train from Chicago
to Buffalo–you were ten. It was cold.
Before she tucked you into bed,
the night before,
she described what it was like
to board the Maid of the Mist,
buckling up in big yellow raincoats,
hearing the roar of the falls,
the great spray of Niagara,
clouding your eyes.
Wake up on this fish barrel morning
the fuzzy smell of wet socks and soda cans
sour the sunshine. Singing off key,
the robins’ lilting song is like seven dwarfs
whistling while they work, and I
treading water in duck bottom boots,
can barely reach the edge,
can barely cling tight
to what’s left of my head,
holding the shotgun just high enough
to aim …
Falling back asleep on the couch, I remember
