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.

Four Colors Suffice

So say the mathematicians

at the University of Illinois.

Equations worked late into the night

over vending machine meals

have proved it.

No matter how complex the politics

or how irregular the borders,

cartographers can open

just four pots of color

(including blue for the sea)

without fear of Mexico and Texas

coming up an identical adjacent pink.

So little suffices to keep us apart.

Nuns at Volleyball

I think nuns should be required to wear habits always.  That way when they are doing something normal, like studying in the library, they can look more amusing.

Once, while getting out of the car at a grocery store I heard a beautiful, chiming laughter nearby.  A group of nuns in grey habits were playing volleyball on the grounds of the nursing home next door.  It was an autumn evening.  The light leaned toward them.  Their veils swayed on after the ball left their fists.

Getting the Picture

The writer apologizes to the women.

He thinks we don’t get the picture.

We sit next to you in class, discussing

linguistic properties or logical fallacies,

without seeing this curve of muscle or that cheekbone;

without imagining your long thigh, hard and haired over;

without watching your penis uncurl and plump in our palms

like warm dough,

your gaze softening with pleasure;

without feeling your fingers slide

into the sides of our mouths;

without tensing our tongues

as if licking the last salty drops of you.

Well we do.

We just don’t know how to talk about it.

One Earring Left

I came home without the other last night.

Gone.  Fallen off after twenty years of wear,

bought when being free was new,

after a lunch with wine,

a silver crane with wings spread.

The moon framed herself in the center pane

of my bedroom window.

She may have known where my crane was

but was content to stare dumbly

as I lay alone with his fingerprints still on me.

By morning light everything has flown.

I shower and hang the earring

with the other mateless ones.

Things I’ll Miss #1

  1. You and I laughing at jokes so old we can tell them with one or two words.
  2. The joyous optimism of dogs.
  3. Sitting on the back steps with Llewie on the morning of a day that will be too hot but isn’t yet, to listen to the world wake up.
  4. Green.
  5. My sponsees calling with boy problems, parent problems, work problems, school problems, or kid problems, and witnessing as they find their own brave and beautiful solutions.
  6. Dancing in the kitchen in my underwear.
  7. The feeling of wool as it moves through my hands.

I Don’t Want to be Her, to the End

A bright cake for me to deliver on a rainy day,

pinks and purples as requested,

reading:  Happy Birthday, Dorothy!

The baker asks me which birthday is it?

She’s 98 and in hospice.

I resist the temptation to say, “Her last.”

Her daughter keeps me waiting in the foyer

of the 60’s modern apartment building

with its kidney coffee tables and satellite chandeliers.

Her mouth twists as she takes the cake,

I’m sorry if she’s been a pain in the ass.

Not to me, I’m just delivering cake,

I grin, having been a daughter myself.

 

 

The Sisters

The idiot sisters who live in my attic

are keeping me awake again; I need some rest.

They dress themselves in lengths of fabric, pretend

they are in gowns, capes, boas, and tromp around

to some new play they’ve written.  In the midst of this

romance one of them will remember some old imagined slight

and throw herself down, wracked with sobs on the the threadbare

horsehair sofa, which reminds the others of the play,

causing the lot of them to shriek in excruciating delight.

To shut them up I bring them gifts of cupcakes, candies,

plates of cheeses, and bowls of potatoes, over which they coo

for a while.

Then the fair one wants to save some for later,

the dark one wants to give some away to the poor,

the redhead wants to eat it all now, and they’re into another awful row.

I even taught them to smoke, a quiet, peaceful hobby.

They prefer cherry cigars, puffing on them dramatically,

wearing their fedoras, pounding out mystery novels

on their old Underwood.

Anything will set them off.

I went downtown to get them evicted.  I thought I could sign

a restraining order so they would restrain themselves,

but I was told I can’t because we’re related.  Now we’re in negotiations.

I’ve hired a mediator.  On Tuesdays, when we all get together

I try to calm them down; they try to make me laugh.