Posts for June 26, 2024 (page 8)

            the end of a dream,
            I could hear birds singing,
            ringing against the walls,
            calls uncanny in the cistern.

Hey! Hey come back here!
Open your mouth and let me 
see what you’re eating! 

Between my grandmother and her sister,
the sibling rivalry was fierce.
They scrutinized each other’s
gardens, hairdos, children.
They compared the sheen of their floors,
the design of their quilts,
the crispness of the pickles they canned
and placed in cellars.  

They compared their cellars  

Any hug was followed
by pursed lips and narrowed eyes.
They expertly wielded
faint praise that damned.  

However, the following was undeniable,
even to my grandmother:
Marie’s breakfast potatoes with onions were stellar.
Everyone clamored for Marie’s chocolate-chip cookie recipe.
The mincemeat pies on holiday tables should be made by Marie,
and Marie alone.  

When I married, Marie gave me a recipe card,
the type of card with lines on it,
with “From the Kitchen of…” written on top
and a picture of a rolling pin in the corner.  

It said:
Salt pork renders the best grease
for fried potatoes.
Save your chicken fat
for chocolate chip cookies.
You must use beef suet
in your mincemeat.  

And Grandma’s comment on Marie’s culinary advice?
“Say what you like about Marie, she is certainly an expert on fat.”

Because no camera could capture it

June’s clever music box

In my lifetime
two people have polished my shoes
unsolicited
just because it needed doing
and they loved me.

But today it’s just me
to do what needs to be done.
My black clogs worn almost daily
now scuffed beyond what’s tolerable.

I find my shoeshine bag
I hadn’t thought of for years
still carrying its life-long accumulations–
polishes in oxblood, tan and black–
cans pried open with a penny–
the oily aroma I remember from childhood.

Just as I did years ago,
I dump the contents of the bag
onto an old newspaper on the floor.

I set aside from the rest
the yellow saddle soap
and then the black polish,
a wood-handled brush and a soft cloth.

In imitation of my father,
I methodically clean, polish, brush
and shine with an old cotton tee shirt.

I’m role playing
for those who loved me,
who showed me how to love.

reach for me as crepuscule obscures time’s passage–
flesh understands desire is transtemporal
hearts and minds know circumstance is not

live in words filling pages that will become immortal 
once our souls part from ephemeral existence 

craft a caim for this moment
conjur a spirit to strike a bargain for a future promise

to meet again–
as inextinguishable light seeking refuge beneath the horizon
as delicate illumination sparkling in disguise as marmoris
as impassioned orbs destined to converge in sempiternal ecstasy

Born under the stars mapping the journey of Taurus across the sky with the captured Princess Europa, I have always felt connected with the place where I was born, specifically the farms where my people worked and planted and harvested for generations. I feel the weight of those lands passing out of our hands, but will always remember climbing those hills and working that soil under the guidance of grandparents, aunts, and uncles, eating the fruits of that labor in the form of new potatoes and sour pickles canned in miscellaneous reused glass jars. I am sad that my son never caught tadpoles in the creek to bring to my grandmother as my cousin’s children were able to do

Muck giving under
Foot, hands clutching jarred tadpoles
Released when we left.

There are murals in
California.  Exhaust stained,
gang-signed walls treated
with soap and thinner, creating
something new inside the
negative space.  As he is
telling me this, a design
grows out of his
thumbnail, the paint
from the chalkboard
table giving way to cheap
polyurethane.  Satisfied,
he rises, exits the coffee shop,
and finds another mess
to make sense of.

born, hatched, sprouted

form came to be

nurished, fed, watered

growth

live long, live strong

maybe

weakened, plump, weeds

old age, slaughtered, choked

death.