We are Poised (poem)

Fistful of sand, you pause, ready
to throw again. I've cried over this
enough already, before you involved sand.
Look at you, grown up child, stubbornly committed
to outlive Peter Pan. You are pouting
and fuming and behaving like you need a nap.
You should rub your sleepy eyes
with that sand, but you're too sure you're king
in this box. I don't want to be anywhere near you
when you're like this, but here we are -- both of us, poised,
you, tense, angry, me, off kilter, sad, because I dared you
to grow up. Double dog dared you, even, nah nah nah.
I stood with my palms out, defenseless, vulnerable,
while you whipped white dirt in my eyes.
Sand never comes out of anything, you know.
You don't care right now. You play dirty when you're on
the attack. And I deserve better. I've bandaged your wounds
after too many school yard brawls, put sugar in your water
and called it medicine. How quickly you turned
against me. But I don't want to fight with you about this.
I am already an adult and I don't want to play
patsy cakes on the playground. You can stand there
as long as you like, arm ready to rocket
another burst of sand from your box.
I'll call you the school nurse on my way out.

The You in Someone Else’s Poem (poem)

Maybe I should volunteer

to be the you in someone

else’s poem. I’m tired of being I

all the time, constantly it in a game

of syllabic tag. It might be fun

to see what sort of character

I’d become -- a caricature

of my true self, perhaps, or

worse -- the unflattering, darker

half ruled by the split in my Gemini/

twin personality. Maybe I’d become

exotic, deviant, undefinable.


Or maybe I’d be defined

as a she-devil: one moron-

in-the-guise-of-a-man labeled me

as such once upon a time

because, he said, you never listen;

how devilish of me, I suppose.

I’ve been called a silver bullet

by a Communist friend who giggles

and won’t explain who I’m out

to kill, except he’s sure me, his

contraband, will be seized

by some Stalinist Big Brother

and eliminated for his own

giggly good. I’ve tricked massive

floods of people into calling me sunshine,

a name slipped into my senior yearbook

as a joke, but a joke I still take seriously,

even five years later, still willing to be

the sun: bright and furiously feeling

the heat all the time. I’ve been overlapping-others’ Spanish

Señorita Sarita wicked and winking,

playful and cruel, and my roommates

tell me you’re not someone

I’d fuck with.


But to be defined by a poet,

maybe I need to sit on a stool

in the center of a writers’

workshop and fling my hands

in the air, let my too-thin hair

slide across my eyes and see

what sort of artsy model

I can be without taking my

clothes off. But, then again --

Maybe I need to take my clothes off,

bare my skin, become a vulnerable you.

Maybe I’d be able to stand back

from the finished product and see

myself as a work of art, ready

to be hung on a wall of words

and stared at, loved by, someone.

Maybe I could be coy or trendy or

passionate or quiet or impish or, simply,

ready for my close up, my poet/creator.

Then maybe me as you could be me,

somehow. Maybe -- maybe.

Maybe.

How to Say I Loved You (poem)

You once picked up my disembodied shoe
and held it close to your ear
as if you could hear all
the steps I have taken
if you pressed it against your skin.
I made you give it back
because I needed it for the long walk
home. You understood
but it took you a moment to understand.
That was a long time ago,
though, and I cling to this memory
like a good old dog because...
Now we are divorced,
the merry unmarried imps
that we are. And I won’t speak
for you, but I will loudly decree
that none of this has been worth it
to me. Not even the image
of you, timeless and drunk on your floor
with my black leather shoe
tight in your grip.

Early in Love (poem)

I wake up early
on the mornings I’m in
love. Something warms
me, percolates my senses
until my life in dreams
isn’t doing what it could.
Awake, I lie in the sun slits
and wish those pale strands
were aching fingers
reaching across town, across
my face. This morning,
I’d let air wreck me,
hot and fresh against
my tongue. But these
mornings are bittersweet
because they leave me
taut to want what isn’t
here. Not this early morning.

Two Funerals (poem)

I attended my first funeral
when I was four-years-old.
My cat lost her battle
with time, careening into
a grandfather clock, cracking
her skull and springing her lifeline
like a trap. In the backyard,
my father dug a hole and slid
the shoe-boxed cat deep
into the earth, patted her down
and left her alone. Less than two
years later, I sat stiffly on a pew
in the church I grew up loving,
and wondered if my father
felt as comfortable in his coffin
as he seemed, a relaxed smile
on his kind face, and I wondered
what “dead” meant here
where God must live every day,
here, away from the backyard
where my father once turned
a solemn shovel full of dirt.

McCarthy's on a Sunday Night (poem)

He half-heartedly kicks the back
of my leg and I ask
what for? He shrugs
in a cartoony way
and sez, no reason,
just thought you needed
to be kicked, standing there
alone and posing. So I assess
my position, no doubt propped up
by the bar, and wait to see
if he’ll come a little closer,
close enough for me
to see the details in his smile.
I am posing, I guess, I am
lost in the smoke of a townie bar
watching the regulars shoot pool
while I think about what should come
after last call. Yeah, I stretch
my hand out towards him, say,
you think I am posing?
without cracking a smile.

Father’s Day (poem)

A year ago, I called you
and you said you were in
the pool at your aunt’s house.
I envisioned you treading

water with your cell phone
pressed against your ear
and it made me laugh.
The pool. How absurd!
You said you were the only
adult there without a child.
I didn’t know what to say

except, “Good.” I cradled
your strange image behind
my open eyes and drank
your voice into my flesh
and said good-bye too quickly,

as always. We were childless
parents last Father’s Day
and we will be again this year.
But I won’t be calling you

today, even though I will wonder
if you’re back in that pool,

getting wrinkled, without me
in your ear.