In the long ago of far away,
you'd read me stories
about Shingebiss and the Little Mermaid,
quoted poetry in between putting up pots
of Maxwell House coffee on the stove,
fed me peanut butter and jelly from the jar,
stuffed cabbage by the roll,
taught me to be true to myself,
the wild one who peed in the lot
straining sandstone on rusted screens,
a girl just like you, your Frankenstein,
who walked on a public beach
plastered with dead jelly fish.
Later, I cried out for you
to turn me back
into your real daughter
to braid my pig-tails
beneath a white birch tree,
to tie off the scorched ends.
Then I would sit in your lap
and listen to you talk
about the weather, the sky,
how we were going swimming
that afternoon, I would
smell lilacs
between your breasts,
and before a lid of clouds
covered the sun,
I leaned toward you
and it was quiet.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Cymbalon and the Oud
A cymbalon and an oud
Growing out from the grass
Where a headstone beckons
For me to come closer.
It's my mother,
Powdering herself with
Silent Night
Under her arms, between her breasts.
She's busy and doesn't notice
When I sit down,
Measures a tablespoon of baby oil
Into her palm and smears her face,
Turns into a fingerpainting
With her nose on a plate.
She always had a sense of humor but now
Has become someone I don't recognize.
Disappears into her boudoir
Leaving only a smell
And a trace of powder.
Gone for all those times
I needed to know what to do.
The hammer of the cymbalon
And the cry of the oud
Is all she'll say.
Growing out from the grass
Where a headstone beckons
For me to come closer.
It's my mother,
Powdering herself with
Silent Night
Under her arms, between her breasts.
She's busy and doesn't notice
When I sit down,
Measures a tablespoon of baby oil
Into her palm and smears her face,
Turns into a fingerpainting
With her nose on a plate.
She always had a sense of humor but now
Has become someone I don't recognize.
Disappears into her boudoir
Leaving only a smell
And a trace of powder.
Gone for all those times
I needed to know what to do.
The hammer of the cymbalon
And the cry of the oud
Is all she'll say.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Letter to My Mother
From the time I looked at my watch
I knew I wasn’t going to make it,
Driving past rows of palm trees in the taxi
Mourning the heat from 400 feet up in the Miami summer
While you’d dehydrated on the trip down
From the 24th floor of Co-op City in the Bronx
And died before I could touch your hand.
Not exactly the kind of vacation you had planned.
After the funeral someone had squished
a grapefruit across the table from me.
Daddy had died a year before
In another hospital where the ceiling flaked.
You couldn’t admit he was on his way out,
Made your daughters swear we would zip up our mouths.
When I was younger, I wanted to scream
Until my throat collapsed for your not allowing me
To tell my father good-bye and how much I loved him.
Maybe I should've blamed myself for listening to you,
which I didn’t always do.
Anyhow, that’s a bed-time story for sleepwalkers,
Almost 40 years after your last dream
Of diving from a rockweed-covered pier,
Sea bladders filled with air pops
That you sucked for the first three miles
Until you exhausted yourself
And were pulled down into the Witch’s lair.
You were the first one who taught me how to swim
At Orchard Beach placing your hands
Beneath my stomach and told me to kick,
Not to be afraid, you would hold me.
But I always knew when you’d let go.
You would catch me then, beneath my belly,
A guppy that you brought home
From Woolworth’s one afternoon in a plastic bag
Filled with water, you joked my sisters
Had been rescued from a garbage can, strong stock
From the beer halls of Budapest to places
Where violets grew like gourds
Whose purple I've never seen.
Be there, and I would try to find you on the street,
In the high Magyar cheekbones of a woman
Waiting to order her half a pound of rye sliced without seeds,
I would attack any stranger with my hands and hug her knees.
I knew I wasn’t going to make it,
Driving past rows of palm trees in the taxi
Mourning the heat from 400 feet up in the Miami summer
While you’d dehydrated on the trip down
From the 24th floor of Co-op City in the Bronx
And died before I could touch your hand.
Not exactly the kind of vacation you had planned.
After the funeral someone had squished
a grapefruit across the table from me.
Daddy had died a year before
In another hospital where the ceiling flaked.
You couldn’t admit he was on his way out,
Made your daughters swear we would zip up our mouths.
When I was younger, I wanted to scream
Until my throat collapsed for your not allowing me
To tell my father good-bye and how much I loved him.
Maybe I should've blamed myself for listening to you,
which I didn’t always do.
Anyhow, that’s a bed-time story for sleepwalkers,
Almost 40 years after your last dream
Of diving from a rockweed-covered pier,
Sea bladders filled with air pops
That you sucked for the first three miles
Until you exhausted yourself
And were pulled down into the Witch’s lair.
You were the first one who taught me how to swim
At Orchard Beach placing your hands
Beneath my stomach and told me to kick,
Not to be afraid, you would hold me.
But I always knew when you’d let go.
You would catch me then, beneath my belly,
A guppy that you brought home
From Woolworth’s one afternoon in a plastic bag
Filled with water, you joked my sisters
Had been rescued from a garbage can, strong stock
From the beer halls of Budapest to places
Where violets grew like gourds
Whose purple I've never seen.
Be there, and I would try to find you on the street,
In the high Magyar cheekbones of a woman
Waiting to order her half a pound of rye sliced without seeds,
I would attack any stranger with my hands and hug her knees.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Thickness of the Arctic Ice:
For Earth Day
The thickness of the arctic ice is getting thinner
like a refugee packing her dreams in a suitcase.
The ice is slippery,
and the sun is an article of faith
that rises on a hunch.
like a refugee packing her dreams in a suitcase.
The ice is slippery,
and the sun is an article of faith
that rises on a hunch.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Data Hublet 2
He was a programming geek, and I had received my BA in Art History. Here it was one of those relaxing Saturday mornings where I had a chance to look at my loveable geek sitting behind something other than his souped-up laptop computer. Actually, he was slumped behind the kitchen table and was sipping tea, not his usual double-strength French roast.
“Something on your mind?”
He placed the porcelain cup that I’d bought at a local garage sale on the bridge table. Despite all stereotypes, not all geeks make a lot of money, at least not in this economy.
“What do you mean?” he crinkled his one brow at me that the old boys on “Gay Eye for the Straight Guy” would’ve just loved to wax.
I stepped up to the plate. “Well, I said, two things,” enumerating things clearly enough so that my geek could go right to the source with a minimum of distraction. “Number one, you’re sitting here instead of your office. And number two,” I said, stirring the half-and-half into my own coffee cup, you’re drinking tea. Tea!”
Behind his hazel eyes, I recognized slight hurt. “Today I’ve decided I like tea. Besides, I’m designing a data hub,” he said softly. “And I need something different.”
And was I chopped liver? Last night he’d had a glass a wine with me, but had disappeared for the rest of the evening to “think about things.” I should’ve known better than to even ask, but then again, I’m a glutton for punishment. “A data what?”
“It has to do with business objects.”
I hated when he did that, rolling something out there, and then leaving it alone. He knew I’d bite. “I’m listening.”
“A data hub guarantees a master identity for a given business object, such as a customer, or a product.”
There was nowhere to run or hide. “Say again.”
“Say you’re in the supermarket and you have a bunch of stuff in your shopping cart.” I’d heard enough about shopping carts to last a lifetime. “I mean a real shopping cart,” he interjected, recognizing my blank stare. “Say that each item in your shopping cart has a memory about the exact place it had come from on each aisle, and from any section of the shelf.”
I nodded appropriately. “Well,” he brightened, “your shopping cart would be a data hub with the ability to unify and reconcile common data across a collection of information systems.”
I could see that something had clicked for him. It wasn’t me. Sometimes love can play tricks on you. He put down his tea cup. I went outside to look at the light.
“Something on your mind?”
He placed the porcelain cup that I’d bought at a local garage sale on the bridge table. Despite all stereotypes, not all geeks make a lot of money, at least not in this economy.
“What do you mean?” he crinkled his one brow at me that the old boys on “Gay Eye for the Straight Guy” would’ve just loved to wax.
I stepped up to the plate. “Well, I said, two things,” enumerating things clearly enough so that my geek could go right to the source with a minimum of distraction. “Number one, you’re sitting here instead of your office. And number two,” I said, stirring the half-and-half into my own coffee cup, you’re drinking tea. Tea!”
Behind his hazel eyes, I recognized slight hurt. “Today I’ve decided I like tea. Besides, I’m designing a data hub,” he said softly. “And I need something different.”
And was I chopped liver? Last night he’d had a glass a wine with me, but had disappeared for the rest of the evening to “think about things.” I should’ve known better than to even ask, but then again, I’m a glutton for punishment. “A data what?”
“It has to do with business objects.”
I hated when he did that, rolling something out there, and then leaving it alone. He knew I’d bite. “I’m listening.”
“A data hub guarantees a master identity for a given business object, such as a customer, or a product.”
There was nowhere to run or hide. “Say again.”
“Say you’re in the supermarket and you have a bunch of stuff in your shopping cart.” I’d heard enough about shopping carts to last a lifetime. “I mean a real shopping cart,” he interjected, recognizing my blank stare. “Say that each item in your shopping cart has a memory about the exact place it had come from on each aisle, and from any section of the shelf.”
I nodded appropriately. “Well,” he brightened, “your shopping cart would be a data hub with the ability to unify and reconcile common data across a collection of information systems.”
I could see that something had clicked for him. It wasn’t me. Sometimes love can play tricks on you. He put down his tea cup. I went outside to look at the light.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Silver Kittens Say "Meow"
He decides
for the first time
not to come home for dinner
no, not now,
kittens are partying
beneath street lamps
wrapped in silver
in his head
he tells his mother
how he didn't hear her calling
from upstairs
how his ears must've been stuffed
from that bad flu
she'll nod
ask how school was
plow her fingers
through his spiked hair
the way he hates
as kittens meow
he wants to answer
not sound stupid
like he's never seen
a kitten
playing
with a long piece of string
for the first time
not to come home for dinner
no, not now,
kittens are partying
beneath street lamps
wrapped in silver
in his head
he tells his mother
how he didn't hear her calling
from upstairs
how his ears must've been stuffed
from that bad flu
she'll nod
ask how school was
plow her fingers
through his spiked hair
the way he hates
as kittens meow
he wants to answer
not sound stupid
like he's never seen
a kitten
playing
with a long piece of string
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Recession Times Two
She came toward me from between the electric eye of the supermarket door wheeling a shopping cart. A single paper bag looked out from behind its bars. Two cases of beer were stacked on the bottom of the cart. She wore jeans, brown hair held in a clip, shaking her cell phone upside down and sideways like a snow-globe, waiting for some picture to rearrange itself.
If she’s looking for clarity, forget it. Charity, that’s something else, something I count on standing here outside the supermarket selling subscriptions to newspapers going belly up or offering services as a leisure travel consultant. Who wants to bother? Everyone takes care of business online these days. But living totally online is a myth, at least that’s what I told the email address who hired me. “A person has to come up for air,” I said. “It’s the way we’re built.”
She passed in front of my wooden enclave squeezed between the parking lot and hundreds of shopping carts, red noses sniffing inside each other. She looked at me as though I was a dish of flan that’s been sitting in a restaurant window for two weeks.
“Wait,” I said.
She jolted the carriage to a halt. "What?”
“Like a free paper?”
She reached out, and for a moment, stood in the smile aisle. It was a pleasant site. Traveling across country for several months and living out of the trunk of my car I'd passed through one town after another watching families, men and women queuing up to catch a movie, standing outside bank windows with a plastic bank card, girls on television with short skirts and few lines, parties with open bottles of beer running down the sides of an iced cooler, tent cities on the edge of towns drawing a tight circle around my nipple and pulling hard until I couldn't breathe anymore.
“Want to subscribe? You’ll save $1,000 a year. Delivered to your doorstep. If you subscribe for two years, you’ll save $1,250. It keeps going up. Plus, you’ll get a 15-month calendar, free of charge.”
“There are only 12 months in a year,” she said with a hint of scorn.
“You can use the three extra ones anyway you like.”
“That’s too crazy.”
“I know," I admitted. "Say, what’s your name?”
“Margaret.” She handed me her cellphone like she was placing a wafer on my pink tongue. “It’s my phone,” she said, glancing at the message bar. “It's stopped working again. D'you know anything about decent plans?”
I had made plans and forgot about them not knowing why they were important. I had walked away from plans that other people had made. I had tried to follow plans that were treasure maps with arrows pointing due west, due north, and seas rolling with waves. My life hinged at this moment on one answer.
"You bet," I said, and winked at her.
If she’s looking for clarity, forget it. Charity, that’s something else, something I count on standing here outside the supermarket selling subscriptions to newspapers going belly up or offering services as a leisure travel consultant. Who wants to bother? Everyone takes care of business online these days. But living totally online is a myth, at least that’s what I told the email address who hired me. “A person has to come up for air,” I said. “It’s the way we’re built.”
She passed in front of my wooden enclave squeezed between the parking lot and hundreds of shopping carts, red noses sniffing inside each other. She looked at me as though I was a dish of flan that’s been sitting in a restaurant window for two weeks.
“Wait,” I said.
She jolted the carriage to a halt. "What?”
“Like a free paper?”
She reached out, and for a moment, stood in the smile aisle. It was a pleasant site. Traveling across country for several months and living out of the trunk of my car I'd passed through one town after another watching families, men and women queuing up to catch a movie, standing outside bank windows with a plastic bank card, girls on television with short skirts and few lines, parties with open bottles of beer running down the sides of an iced cooler, tent cities on the edge of towns drawing a tight circle around my nipple and pulling hard until I couldn't breathe anymore.
“Want to subscribe? You’ll save $1,000 a year. Delivered to your doorstep. If you subscribe for two years, you’ll save $1,250. It keeps going up. Plus, you’ll get a 15-month calendar, free of charge.”
“There are only 12 months in a year,” she said with a hint of scorn.
“You can use the three extra ones anyway you like.”
“That’s too crazy.”
“I know," I admitted. "Say, what’s your name?”
“Margaret.” She handed me her cellphone like she was placing a wafer on my pink tongue. “It’s my phone,” she said, glancing at the message bar. “It's stopped working again. D'you know anything about decent plans?”
I had made plans and forgot about them not knowing why they were important. I had walked away from plans that other people had made. I had tried to follow plans that were treasure maps with arrows pointing due west, due north, and seas rolling with waves. My life hinged at this moment on one answer.
"You bet," I said, and winked at her.
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