Poetry

Sometimes I wander around wondering
where my mother is. The family buried
her next to her own mother. Out there,
the hard pines darken early. Anyone
can hide and not be found for years.
Bobby Cherry laid low there. The girls came
in his dreams...

hovering their mouths 

like two men 

moments before 

they turn on each other

that is how the grass smells 

In a nondescript hotel in East Texas, I fell
in love with a couple. There in the dim

hallway with rugs that were clean enough
but darkly patterned to hide the stains so who knows,

her back was against the wall, her arms up and around
his neck...

My mother is alive and funny
in the house above the marsh.

I think she does not miss my father much
as he is still alive, though elsewhere.

It must be so hard to be Miles Davis

and a ghost, and to sit in my kitchen

as I squeal along on a dime-store horn

A paycheck. A nadir. Hired as accompaniment
for sequined swimmers in an amphitheater in Queens.
To keep the band working. A footnote.

It is difficult to bark while 

the teeth are clinched 

so it goes, deep growl 

after mean-ass growl 

Mount Vernon, NY, summer 2001

Sitting on the concrete steps in the back of my grandma’s house, 
our dad shows us how to burn paper 
with a magnifying glass. Says people kill ants this way, 
how cruel it is. It was true: the magnifying glass...

Suppose we were there for some event 

we did not want in on or did. Faith flung 

so hard, the cage I felt around me was 

no cage, just fear, in a summer-long wither; 

10.

Dad, you look like a doll
I wouldn’t want to play with, boxed
in your casket. The mortician
tried to paint you pretty.
I wanted to be pretty, too, but mom says
makeup is inappropriate for funerals.

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