Posts for June 7, 2024 (page 10)

I’m sorry,  Allen—
I need to feel the rhythm
like pounding on keys.

What does it matter if I create a sentence, or fracture line breaks?

My fingers still plunk
at the corner of my desk
so I don’t lose count.

Words, like intervals, sing across the page in time with heart’s metronome.

With heart’s metronome,
sing across the page in time,
words—like intervals.

So I don’t lose count, at the corner of my desk, my fingers still plunk.

Fracturing line breaks,
or creating a sentence,
what does it matter?

Like pounding on keys, I need to feel the rhythm, Allen—I’m sorry.

I have a spot of poison ivy
on one hand, I notice spread
to other hand. Once, my husband
and I both rushed to doctor, bodies
full of poison ivy. Prescribed
steroids, matching shots
in the butt, and our doctor’s
gardener’s number, we learn
how to avoid leaves of three.

Years ago, I sat in the kitchen
of a chef, watching her dice
and sauté. When I complained
of arthritis creeping into my hands,
she told me she once suffered
the creaks and cramps until she
looked at her hands and commanded
arthritis to stop. Through sheer will
and determination, she refused
her hands to cripple her career goal.

As I write this poem, I look at
one spot of inflammation, then
the other. Stop! I will you to not
spread any further. Ignoring
itches on my scalp, I refuse
to scratch and wonder if it’s that easy,
scrolling through pictures of food
that chef posts, years later, still
able to use her hands when mine
are oozing oils I know will spread,
unwilling to confess how good
it just felt to scratch. Just a little bit.

Peel the mouth off first
tricky thing that says too much 
when it should have said little and little
when it should have said more
scrub it clean and then the hands
with the skin that likes to burn
with water pounding on you rotate
dear rotisserie until what was is gone and red
and raw you pull back the curtain
and step out, new, with wings.

Your dog is doing that cute trick

you keep trying to film.

Oops.  It was off camera.

Sorry.

Your dog is making faces

at the cats

outside

in the rain.

Your dog has been staring at me intensely

for three whole hours.

Please press the button

that makes me toss her a treat.

Your dog is practicing card tricks,

possibly for nefarious purposes.

Your dog is practicing witchcraft,

definitely for nefarious purposes.

Your dog is performing the first act of Hamilton.  Poorly.

Your dog is howling Nickelback songs.

Please press the screen three times

if you want me to call her a “bad dog.”

Your dog is standing on the

Victorian fainting couch.

(You do own one of those, don’t you?)

Your dog is reading right wing propaganda.

Please come home soon.

Your dog has flipped her name around and become God.

It is mass chaos here.

She is demanding ALL the treats!

Please for the love of dog, come home!

A smoked sausage named after a city in Germany, the country where my father’s family originated. Pork liver, pork scraps, pork fat ground with various spices: garlic, allspice, coriander, marjoram, mustard seed, nutmeg, thyme, sage. You could buy it at the deli counter in thick slices to eat between bread as any other cold cut. Our family liked the softer variety—a pâté—that Oscar Mayer wrapped in a plastic tube labeled Authentic. I can still picture how Dad rotated a Ritz cracker to slather a perfectly even layer that came to a peak in the center like a miniature sand dune. He did the same when buttering muffins or icing on cupcakes. We all have our peculiarities. I thought it a blend of eccentric and magical.

The Yous in my poem decide to form a union. They are tired of being exploited, they say, so they return the favor. They line up at my bedside at night to stare at me, waiting for me to open my eyes and acknowledge them; they only scatter when I threaten to write another poem about them. I vanish them to the corner with the other overused images—Icarus and his floating, the grace of God, amongst others—and tell them to think about what they’ve done, and I will write a poem about that, too. This is their bargaining chip. They know I cannot write about anything else, and they maintain the delicate balance between poetics and undiagnosed mental illness. They say they want differentiation. [               ] is not [          ] is not [                 ] is not 

expectant bud   
full smooth  silky white 
waiting to burst into lemony life

yesterday you made me corn

fed four times each day

starting after the milk cows

and the sun’s rising

the chickens cluck and follow

either nagging or thanking

grain left behind by horses

scraps from the kitchen table

greens from the garden’s bounty

all to fatten them

she calls them by name

knowing there will come a time

to tell them good-bye

(after the undated sketch, “Peasant Girl Feeding Chickens,” by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot)

I have a small flock of chickens that are fun and full of sass
they also love destroying all of my grass

I love the way they run to greet me clucking and scratching with their feet
but all they really care about is what I am bringing them for a treat

they love to peck at painted toes and hands that gather eggs out of their nest
though they drive me crazy their fresh eggs are the best