From The Green Season


LIZARD BRAIN

Sorting laundry
I come across
my black sweater
still thick after two days
with the smell of you.
Though the morning
is much too hot
I put it on.
At Trader Joe’s
I talk on my cell phone
telling every juicy bit
to my best friend
while I buy your
favorite Chardonnay
and shape of pasta.
I stop at Barnes & Noble
and a buy a book
that you might like to read
while I cook for you.
We watch American Idol
because you want to
and I pretend
to care who wins.
I do this happily.
I am a girl again.
All that I once knew
of love and men has shed
like an old skin.
I operate on instinct now
my lizard brain in charge.




From Transforming Matter


GRIEF BECOMES ME

You've never looked better,
my friends Edward and Neil
tell me and lean close
for a clearer view.
I know what they mean
and believe it's true,
the same way earth and sky
wash to a radiant clean
after relentless days of rain.
How you would present me
with pieces of sea glass
tumbled smooth
from journeying canyons
and rivers to the ocean
and back again
washing up at our feet--
bits of amber, green,
and the rarest stellar blue.
Everything pure and impure
has leached from the soil
of my face,
and in the corners of my eyes,
hard crystals form.

LESSON

A portion of ashes we buried,
the portion remaining to be scattered
sits on a shelf
in my office, the container swathed
in a flannel bag, like the bag
protecting your tuxedo shoes.
How handsome you were in formal clothes!
Strangers often asked if you were someone.
Should they ask for your autograph?
The irreducible things that make up a person--
ashes, bits of tooth and bone--
transform from one noun
into another.
Before your death, Dearheart
I didn't know
that physics and grammar
are the same sad subject:
the transformation of matter,
transforming what matters.




From Feathers & Dust


CRAVING

I broke the long stems
of dry spaghetti
into worm-sized pieces
that I ate as I watched
cartoons on TV:
Baby Huey in his tiny diaper,
Porky and Petunia Pig.
I popped the round top
from the Hershey's chocolate can,
spooned the unsweetened
powder into my mouth.
Mom was pregnant.
At my eleventh birthday party,
Dad patted her belly,
bragged to my friends
that he'd blown up that balloon.
It was the beginning of summer.
My friends had begun to kiss boys,
steal candy and cigarettes
from Vons.
I spent the long afternoons
lying on the floor,
cartoons flickering silently
on the black and white TV,
the cord of the telephone
wrapped around my arm,
whispers of the high school boy
I knew from the park
slipping into my ear.
I ate the skin
from the tips of my fingers,
from the tops of my toes
until they bled.
I didn't know then
what was bitter,
as my life spilled out around me,
fine powder from a dark brown tin.



RANK

I never wore white shoes
before Memorial Day
or suede in summer.
I crossed my legs
primly at the ankle,
wore a panty girdle
and a full-length slip,
no shadow of body
apparent through my dress.
I knew better than
to crackle gum,
or walk down the street
cigarette dangling
from my mouth,
knew better than
to pierce my ears,
like some common girl.
Still, his mother
rooted out the tell-tale
signs, traces of a family
line who worked for wages
in "mediocre" jobs.
The day after
we'd spent the night together
and got caught,
he came to my apartment
with a deck of cards
that he spread across
the kitchen table,
saying, Mother says
I have to teach you bridge
so we'll have something
in common.
He arranged the cards
in suits to demonstrate
their ranking,
clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades,
saying spades are the boss
trump, outrank everything,
always.




From Deep Red


THE DOCTOR BOOK

I loved the big doctor book
with cut-away picture
of the human body,
the highway map of arteries
and veins, intestines
like the snakes I made with clay,
the liver; so slimy and dark
I could almost feel it slip through my hand.
Best of all, I liked the pictures
of the smallpox victims,
their bodies almost absent
under a mass of festering sores.
My grandpa had smallpox when he was a boy,
but he recovered without a scar
to look like Gary Cooper.
If such a miracle were possible,
then surely I was safe in his house.



NEIGHBORS

The next-door neighbor,
Gino, played the accordion
in his underwear.
His wife, Marcelle, washed
her windows all the time,
Mother said, "like putting a clean
dress over dirty underwear."

I don't know where Marcelle was,
but her children were asleep,
that night when Gino pulled me onto his lap,
slipped his hand under my baby doll
pajamas, rubbed my chest and belly,
ask me if I loved my best friend,
and did I kiss her on the mouth?
He rubbed and kissed and whispered
until I fell asleep.
It was Gino's questions
that I thought were strange,
so when I got home, I told what happened.
The policeman's questions were strange too,
why would Gino take out his penis
in the living room?

To court, I wore a pink angora sweater
and a plaid pleated skirt,
my hair in a pony tail pulled so tight
my eyes hurt when I told what happened.
When the judge threw the case out of court,
he said, "It'll be a sad day for America
when a man can't show a little affection
for his neighbor's child."

. . . . . . . . . .


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