Chord Progression
A major seventh chord rings in sweet harmony.
Fingers transition to a dominant seventh,
To a minor seventh,
To a major chord.
The guitar plays while I gently weep.
A major seventh chord rings in sweet harmony.
Fingers transition to a dominant seventh,
To a minor seventh,
To a major chord.
The guitar plays while I gently weep.
It was during one Sunday dinner,
family gathered around the table
of my mother’s sunny kitchen,
that we heard an ambulance wail
up the drive to that ramshackle
square of a house next door.
At first we tried to mind
our own business, eat our meat
and gravy, bread and butter,
but eventually we looked
out the window, saw the white
mashed potato lump of a body
bag wheeled out on a stretcher
and the two big boys, both alive,
bulging from the front door frame
behind it, faces flushed and full
of grief, followed by a tuck-tailed
pair of dejected-looking dogs.
The witch was dead. I couldn’t eat.
My stomach was full of knots.
I watched a cardinal land
amidst a thicket
along the roadside
while I waited
for the light to change,
his red and my red
speaking to one another
the way elements
of some still-life do.
The light did change,
he flew away,
as I passed beneath
pool felt green,
I thought how like
attracts like,
I’m drawn to the dour plum,
others to the golden light
angling in
from an unseen window.
When I think of my poor wife,
how unhappy she must be.
tree could it be
we too shed and renew
dropping cells like leaves
going dormant to refresh layers costuming bowing of boughs
emerge with stronger unfurling in the new season
having learned from the parasites that fed in the former years
adapting toxins natural repellents emiting from our skin the very thing needed
to put off the naysayers the trunkulent gaslighters the weight of hangers on that would have before eaten us alive
we are closer to nature than egos would have us believe
the earth goes round the sun after all
her father’s fatal bronzes
loosing little
at the sirens random romance
the sand-harvest
school notes lost
a lullaby for myth
the first were done
still exhausted
with cunning contempt
My best friend lived in a pale pink house
the color of fallen peonies in birdbath water.
She was an only child. Her mom let her line
her eyes with raven’s eye black
& wear shimmery gold eyeshadow from Kmart.
She was a Linda, too & for an entire summer
we fused—middle school twins bantering
about boys. We’d crawl under her sleek sateen
bedspread, which was splashed with lilac clusters,
white roses & a ruffled skirt at the bottom.
Each clutched a hand on a Motorola transistor
& we’d fall asleep with them squashed under
our pillows as they crackled
with Motown & Sonny & Cher. We got
tipsy from cheap whiskey her dad
stashed in his sock drawer & after that
my mom never let me go over again.
Freshman year came. No classes
together. She started going with a greaser
& I hooked up with a long-haired
English nerd who read Whitman & Baldwin.
Decades later, I still have an expansive palette
of sparkle shadows, a fondness for ruffles.
Every once in a while I long to grab a Motorola
in one hand, jigger of whiskey in the other.
is what I do each day in this cellar of books,
fingering each letter as potential treasure
among shopping lists, invoices, thankyous—
I enter a stranger into his mind, her mind,
access secret sentiments,
eavesdrop on opinions reserved for one,
share satisfactions, distractions, retractions—
all in search of a scholar’s life.
I admit my shame to the librarian:
“It’s what an archivist must do,” he says,
“Turn every page,” says Robert Caro,
who turned countless pages
to find LBJ a crook and a savior,
Robert Moses a tyrant and a dreamer.
I’m researching a saint,
albeit without a mosaic crown or two miracles
(but in three boxes of letters I’ve seen dozens!),
and yet I turn page after page,
with no small guilt
at this voyeur’s task.
