object poem

“Health Tips for a Cleaner Conscience”

An immaculate paper cup sits
emasculated in its 60% post consumer
fiber vest, its adorable border
pattern alternates between Reuse,
Recycle, and Produce as many
black plastic masks to top
adult appropriate sippy cups as
humanly possible. Seriously
black is in this season, and all
the rage in the landfills.
Inside cardboard cup beats
teabag heart, crying tainted
yellow tears into scalded water
waiting to burn tongue into
prophesying submission to
health guru’s latest fiddle-faddle.
After all, tea contains the
elixir of life everlasting
along with surplus antioxidants
that cure cancer, new
vitamins to eradicate Alzheimer’s,
and a special chemical that kills
middle class guilty conscience.
Keep ignoring the bull whale
blowing a steam signal warning
in your morning Earl Gray ocean,
and eventually the problem
should evaporate.

02.24.09

epistolary poem

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner Thoughts

You’ll be coming ‘round the mountain
when you come like the sun
rising on bowls of cereal
and coffee breathing bitter life
into my brain, still cold
and soggy with milky sighs of sleep.
Some days I can see you peeking
‘round the grandfather clock pendulum,
"here hide and seekers counted
the seconds between clasped fingers,"
your shadow oscillating short
and long, measuring the days
until I can see you, not just
your pen ink scribbled shape
outlined against the light.

When you ask me to give you
the ketchup for your chicken fingers
what stories will I pass across the table to you
accompanied by corn syrup and tomato paste?
Over lunch shall I share with you
bard songs of swashbuckling derring-do,
adventures when friends became
family as we walked the plank
into Miller fountain, “They threw me in
on my twenty first birthday, you know,”
or will my words microwave
these nuggets of my past-present,
sucking the juices from syllables and
spilling them onto your corduroy
jumper colored the blue green of water waves.

Daughter, I think about you
even though I do not know
the hour of your advent. Evenings
I stare at my computer screen
with my ears plugged into the plastic
shells that echo the sea’s breathing
in and out with the movement of the
time, and I think forward to baby’s ticking heart,
a metronome marching beat of
yellow rubber galoshes in puddle
oceans and pounding feet on stairways.
I write you into the strands of
my memory; “I dreamed about you
before you were born,” dreamed you
into the rainbow throw rug on the lap of God.
02.10.09

My class is going to workshop this one; I can't wait to hear what they think, but I'm nervous, too.