insomnia

sanctuary treaty mid-night train
a whistle in the dark when the wind is right
one foot uncovered, count the seconds

haven access sleeping mutt
a whimper of dream when the wind is wrong
but is cold again, tucks it back

refuge fortress leafed-out trees
a rustling discomfort when the wind is strong
then big roll left, one-eyed raccoon

asylum conduit accelerating car
a rending rumble when the winds are ill
hits the floor, forgotten bell

shelter entreaty red-brick wall
a bass-drum heart when the winds are still
thick murmur, and exhale

North of 158,9

Even as a small boy I wanted to leave the two-tone three-deckers
shingled in green and putty-colored asbestos and never look back.

Books were armor. History lived in my hands and head.
Swallow the foaming anger. They cared about Mary, the numbers,

and little else. Homework was home. The nurture of shouting
and flying glass never failed. I got accepted to Harvard

but the role was too foreign, too far a stretch.
My unpronounceable name, the smudge of immigrant dust.

Fast forward past too many wives and other people’s children.
How not to shout or make glass fly. So much easier solo,

the buried urge to shrink. She pulls my hand and says crazy eights?
I can’t recall the weight of anybody's hand except my own.

Initiation

Were it not for passing out
at Faneuil Hall Marketplace
and staring up into the bleary-eyed
face of a Boston cop
I’d say it went well.

There’s the frying pan
for the first Valentine’s Day
and the flowers at the
he-man lab-or-a-tory
but after that the comfort set in.

I still have the vase
and other ephemera
so it occurred to me
after the fact that the vase
should not collect dust.

We try too hard
to remember, honor
with dignity everything
that trails behind. So
every week we fill the

Crate & Barrel vase, its
own self-lighting candle,
and rotate the flowers
among the lesser so the
vessel is never empty.

P.S. Your ephemera thrives
and grows in his own
organic way, with his
exterior conversations and
my interior pas de deux.

Cr Writ II (T/Th 6:30 YWCA Salem)

From Joyce Carol Oates short story "Suicide by Fitness Center":

Another feature of the Fitness Center is the "gym cat." This is a heavyset graceless the size of an Airdale with coarse tufted fur the color of spilled oil, large spatulate feet, spongy pads, a blunt pugnacious face, stiff whiskers and green-glassy feral eyes. So far as I can determine, the gym cat has no name.

The gym cat--nameless, though I have tried to name him--continues to stare from his perch only a few feet away; he is impassive, inscrutable, his sword-like tail twitches with a malicious feline glee; yet when you turn, the ledge is empty.

The gym cat appears to those who will die. He is our totem.

Clearly Oates is speaking metaphorically.

Although I've spent no calculable time
in a gym over the past 35 years,
I will suggest that Oates' "gym cat"
is actually a 51-year-old Jiffy Lube manager
named Leo who lives with his divorced mother,
Stella, in a 2nd floor apartment
squeezed between a windowless tavern
and a new Stop & Shop off Route 1 in Saugus.

Leo's complexion tends toward
the freckled pink, and his hair
is sparse and rust-colored
like that of Stella's deceased father,
causing Stella to recall, at least
once a day, Papa emerging
half-clad and newspapered from the john.

Does anyone else see this?

Birthdays

Measuring the passage
of time in birth dates
not of mine or those close
but strangers whose art
occurs decades after,
causing me to rue, lament,
grieve the booted feet
of their younger years
stamping outside their
elementary doors as instructed

mud makes work

your mud looks like dirt
but feels like years
truly lived beyond the erudite,
the facile employment
of words when I can hardly
remember my own name.

Impulsivity

Like panicked crowds rushing the gate,
words trip and trample his inner voice yelling, "Stop!"
Always, after, there’s the hinge—
immediate assessment of damage,
who is angry, what can be fixed.

Sometimes we are given a second chance
that feels like something more than relief
for the absence of scolding
or indulgent but indifferent naming.

Sometimes we are devoted to tasks so full,
voices, both outer and inner, stop, leaving empty spaces.

Sometimes those spaces provide a possibility
for resurrection that can never be reclaimed.

She knew in one hitched breath that he was there,
that he was close enough to snatch as his
the moment she was blind, to finish the sentence
and turn one page on fathers and sons, brothers and loss.

From Worcester, Massachusetts, We Get a Glimpse of Heaven

I. Herkimer

We're in Herkimer County for the fourth time
in as many years and, of course, it's raining.
The mines, at least, were warm.
We trudge through thawing fields
to a tent city erected by the mineral possessed.

$3 a day, don't dig in the roped off sites,
dig at your own risk, good luck!

Dogs, tethered to trucks and campers,
sleep and pant in this junkyard campground.
Canvas tarps the colors of luck and mud
puff and flap at disheveled angles.

Deep in their craters,
ringed by a fringe of patio lanterns,
they scrape mud into plastic strainers,
smash limestone pinatas with ten-pound sledges.

This is a lunar carnival.

We snicker about losers, ankle deep in water,
who fritter their days in holes seeking
that one perfect
doubly terminated quartz crystal.

They glare at us from their camping stools,
hate our university van, flaunt their finds,
desperate trophies on earthen mantles.


II. Shrewsbury

She paces,
picking her psoriatic scalp
through dandelion fuzz,
then her nose, pondering
two kewpie dolls
recently fished from a swim
in a gutter puddle.

Hi there, those are nice dolls. What's her name?
Lucy.
I see, and this one?
Lucy.
Lucy too? Two Lucys, huh?

She cackles.
The room is ripe with foul air.

Have a seat up here--
Her fever.
Really? That's too bad.
So what's the trouble--

An offering of Lucys to me.

Thank you.

And the flutter of arms.

Just a minute, hold on, you're stuck, the sleeve,
wait--

She drags her face
through the hole of her shirt.
Electrified fuzz
dances on her head.
The stench is staggering.
Tremulous hands flutter,
capture mine in motion,
suspend them between us.

One breast is surgically absent,
an old site, well-healed;
the other atrophic, weeping,
a pendant crimson cabbage.

Okay, I see, let go, please,
I'll try not to hurt you,
I'm going to touch you just a little bit.


III. Columbia

My boots are so caked with polish
I can carve my name
in the toe with my fingernail.
Shit-brown gobs of mud
speckle the back of my pants.
I whine through another FTX loaded with gear,
praying for relief, knowing I can't cut it.

I mate shelter halves with
someone I hardly know,
and pass the night battling
the trickle of water seeking
my half of the tent.
Twin tags dangle from metal
pearls around my neck.
I'm daddy's girl, all right.


IV. Worcester

It's late.
Coasting to the tollbooth,
I finger the coins in my ashtray,
ridges vs. smooth, bigger vs. small.

This is commuter braille.

The toll guy wears surgical gloves.
I feel insulted.

A tractor-trailer passes
spraying enough milky slush
to wash my windshield.
I watch it dribble and pool,
jiggling, in the corners.
Peeling iridescent dots spell
Worcester Next Nine Exits.


V. Home

I used to swing in my backyard as high
as my legs could take me hoping one day
with just the right push I'd go all the way over
and not fall. Now if I could only swing just a little bit
higher I bet I could kick the bottom of heaven with my toes.

sleepwalking

it was raining
I sought the shallow spots
where gutter water
sidled against the curb
then extended wide
the way a woman
too shy to speak
reclines against
a stack of pillows

a branch, snared
in a gutter grate,
curved up and out
the elegant arm
of a small sad woman
immersed in fawning water
resigned to groping air
through steel bars

I sidestepped her grasp
and turned my face
to the rain, unable to bear
the gaze of her moonstone
eyes still filled with snow

Sewing

baby-yellow leaves
ragged swatches
falling
snag on twin hooks
falling still
I gather my heap
of gold rags
and cover
myself: I've learned
to mend so
you'll never be
able to tell

Moving Pictures

A young woman has been walking across my aunt's
dining room wall since 1941. She enters near
the floor lamp with the caramel-colored shade
and exits by the sideboard, pausing in her passage
to suggest a smile with charcoaled lips and wave
the self-conscious wave of the just-discovered.
Seated at my aunt's table, we watch her, feeling
cheated by her exile over the holiday years.
The old woman watches, too, as if for the first time,
estranged from her celluloid image, unable to recall
who is waving or why they brought her here at all.

Summons

Will you appear to me
fishing in early morning mist?
Reclining on the steps
of a farmhouse porch?
Or weaving through an airport

late at night?
Will you be standing near me
when I glance up
from my book
certain you whispered my name?

What words, incantations,
will summon you,
make you appear, now,
radiant, brave enough
to claim my adamantine heart?

First Vigil

and days tumble
to the bottom of summer
to one night when the
green still ticks
like a bicycle wheel
and the cool tiptoes on your skin

you lie, sprawled in
your own patch of shadow
beside a Skippy jar
lined with grass
and wait, scanning
the grey for the
very first flicker

The Tree Queen

So you see, I never imagined
that place in you,
textured, tight, immovable,
shaped to shelter--no cradle
the weary of me,
the ache of words. As a girl

I climbed to the highest point
of the neighbor's maple,
higher than any nine-year-old
should climb, and claimed
my spot upon a three-pronged throne,
branches curved to seat
a regal, sneakered girl,
a queen of leaf and bark.

I nestle in the unyielding,
brown-bark corners of you
remembering the scent of maple.

And I never imagined
this place, will cool,
airy, with room to sprawl
under sway of silverleaf fronds
seeking one point in air,
that point of breezeless home,
of never-swinging stillness.

At night I hear the murmur of leaves,
the silence of wood,
and remember the scrape and
lean of you, the brush of silver hair,
fragrant, cool, against my warm cheek.

Lying still, I inhale
and close my eyes, waiting;
there you are, the scent of memory.

Misstep

We speak but don't talk.
You and your side,

I on mine.
Choices run thick

between us
filling cavities of achy silence.

We listen for movement,
itself an act of moving,

toward the healing
of open spaces.

Resurrection

I fretted over
what to serve for supper.

How could I have noticed
the brilliant arrangement
of time in light?

I plucked lint
from cushions
of dining room chairs,

stared at lilting dust
in afternoon sunlight,

whisped air through
cadaverous lungs.

How could I have expected
the tender death
that awaited me?

I've known the indifference
of morning fog,

the insensibility
of late autumn pears.