Category: The news

The Nurse and the Sailor, 1945

Every horn in the city blares

She edges through the mob

Where’s the subway stop?

The familiar corner is disguised

in Mardi Gras crepe

Cold beer sloshes down her neck

A hand on her shoulder

She spins around

All night she’s been moving bodies and listening.

During the day the boys smoke and play cards,

but on night shift they tell stories, eyes unmoving;

a heroic raincoat stuffed into the suck of a lung,

gut burst from the shockingly fragile skin of a belly,

the white of bone,

the remains of a face.

Drink this, she tells them.  Rest.  I’ll see you tomorrow.

She spins around

Some sailor grabs her

Cigar smoke and sweat

Tongue prying her lips apart

A shutter snaps

She breaks

Away

Overkill

Mother’s cooked up way too much.

She doesn’t just make duck, but makes

pintail ducks, wood ducks, ruddy ducks, eider ducks, fulvis tree ducks, widgeons,

cinnamon teals, red breasted mergansers,

and on and on, a redundancy of duck.

Still she pushes the plate toward us.

Fescue fingers up the sidewalks.

Chickweed loiter at the curb.

Trumpet vine clasps the gate shut.

Profligate snails dance through their 17 hours of foreplay,

leaving trails all over.

Cottony packets stuffed with baby spiders

hang in the back of our closets until

we carry them out at arm’s length.

Bagworms wrap the redbuds and gorge

until we split them open.

There’s no end to her excess.

Dandelion blow sticks to the sappy trunk of the white pine.

Millions of sperm bulge in teenaged boys.

And babies drop into dumpsters at dances.