Redtree Collection
Published in Redtree (Bryn Mawr College), 1994, 1995
Tomatoes, Elvis, and the Beatles (1994)
Tell me you were
not always dead.
Tell me I was careful-
I picked your face
ripe and fat,
a tomato from
a drooping caged vine.
Insist I pulled it
plump, that I spoke
so softly, that I refused
to risk the slightest
impression.
Tell me your
red skin was once
that supple, that
sensitive.
Did I,
in some
spoiled fit
kill you?
With a twist so
sharp, with a hand
so huge, I crushed you
and squeezed
you shapeless.
Could it have been me?
Was I the culprit
who poked and
peeled you
to a splotch,
a puddle of
seeds and pulp?
Perhaps you were
neither alive
nor dead, you
were a seed
I forgot to plant, you
were the flash-fear
of a potential
stain, you were
green and window
sill bound.
Yes, you were
neutral and I
was indifferent.
I imagine having
not picked
killed, or ignored you.
I fantasize you
fallen, wasted
overripe, a taste
bitter and
dark, gravity your
only murderer,
a merciful undoing.
Tell me it is
good that you
seemed always dead
(like Elvis) or
always broken
(like the Beatles)
that I found you this way.
Our relations could be
a sighting,
a flash of sequins,
a cape, an impromptu
reunion,
so singular, fantastic,
and unreal
that they exist
forever in
dispute.
Linzer Hearts
puff up so big and white in this heat,
voluptuous, untouchable.
Back on countertop they withdraw
to factual selves just a
little better than disfigured.
Reality has set in and has
relaxed them to disappointment,
rationalized them to rightness.
They lie on wire racks,
cooling in cooperation, never
resisting jam spread between
their doubled selves, sides
which have somehow failed.
And as brown edges deflate,
awaiting a shower of white
felt like rain on a roof two
stories above, a subtle
shock on top, memory slides and
perfection reaches a pleasing distance.
The jam, a sweetness without teeth,
the remnants of the young woman stuck
inside who knows her body has not lasted
who knows all were is really is
the warmth of sun across
one’s face when clouds
come apart.
Miss Rumphius
Living to be old enough to have
little children circled around your feet,
crumbs dangling from their lips,
eyes wide and fearful and reverent,
you sleep alone and easy at night,
knowing you always kept your options open.
Looking down at a body laid out wake-
straight, covered like a good story-book
lady in patchwork, topped off with a head
of skunk-striped hair, you are blue
from the day in day out of watching
the sun and moon switch places.
Their consistency mocks your options,
their push and pull of the seasons,
the waves, puts the freedom
felt from globe-trotting
to shame.
No island king or fresh fruit could
keep you, your body nagged and you came
back, the sea which spat you out
swallowed you whole, the roses and
purples and violets invited you,
intoxicated, and put you to bed.
The third thing, which you
placed hesitantly on
a back burner, did not need
you, came to life on its
own, blended in to
the clock-work of stars and water
right under your window
sill, beneath your nose,
seeds blown by a wind stronger
than any body, any suitcase full
of souvenirs.
Large and legendary,
it is your name which
precedes you, outrageous
amongst the sparseness of a
small house by the sea.
Having accomplished your tasks,
having lingered above the dusty skies,
the backgrounds you filled in long ago,
sitting solid amongst these colors so
real you could eat and drink them,
you look as though this was not a
matter of choice, that there
were no real options.
You remain here as if only to
prove that a whole summer spent
throwing seeds to the wind is
not a whole summer
wasted.
Scraping Plates
Published in Musomania (Bryn Mawr & Haverford Colleges), 1994
Scraping Plates (1994)
This is love -
common as a sink
full of soap and water,
warm and rubbery,
soiled and lovely,
awful and diminishing.
This is all that has
happened between us-
trapped in the forever
shallow end,
continuously waiting for
the plug to be pulled,
innocently admitting a
tendency to run
away as quickly as
It came.
Come in come in
it calls to
weak hands which
obey each time.
Opposed twins,
reaching for the
same things,
simultaneously they
recall the truths:
the blue of two fixed eyes
the sorrow of second best,
the sincerity of sadness
all over again.
If words do not work,
sensations will.
A squeeze of a sponge
soaked with these waters,
a trickle of pitiful heat
across a stiff back,
all that is needed to
swallow the shiver which
startles straight through
This water is mine, I swear,
contained in square, submerged
in countertop.
I appear in the clear left over
when suds separate.
I indulge in the elusive
putrid and vibrant of bubbles,
colors which stain memory.
With my hands in the thick
of such love I could forget
the huge of the house around
me, the fact that water always
washes somewhere, and warmth
inevitably fades to cool.
I am fixed to this spot.
I am a creature with two
good legs and garden hoses of
veins and intestines all my own.
I am fixed.
This is
love
this flood,
winding its way
around fingers,
threatening circulation.
This is all that has
happened between us,
this steam rising to face like
fever, addictive
and agonizing,
consistent in its
promise to
break.
Dye Job
Published in Uses (Villanova University), 1992
Dye Job (1992)
Get a dye job-
a polident, liposuction
dye job.
Take those strings woven
into your ritzy wig and
get a dye job.
Dye red-a deep, fire
Lucille Ball-technicolor
red.
I’ll do it for you.
I’ll rub that bloody goo
into your scalp and we’ll
watch it swirl down
the drain.
The dye job should
go without a hitch.
So get a plastic pump
transplant-get your veins done.
Scream over the
vibrating boob tube
from the kraftmatic adjustable.
Curl up in a tanning bed
-bake at 375-
you’ll come out lovely,
lovely and brown,
as brown as your
dye job is red. PASTE POEM HERE
Manhattan Magazine Collection
Published in Manhattan Magazine (Manhattan College), 1989, 1990, 1991
I am stupid (1989)
and yes you are pretty
and what a grand job we did
fishing with hooks of pure
vanity.
We have caught dinner tonight
full of ourselves when
we put ourselves down
caressing each word
Of their reply
grabbing each compliment
and running away.
They’ve called it insecurity,
it just looks like
vanity
to me.
In Retrospect (1991)
It was all so very imperfect.
I was chatty and I believe you said catty and
don’t forget insecure.
You chose your words right:
You were truthful, a noncomformist,
you suffered so as a child and now
you want to sleep with your mother.
How suburban, you yawned, my middle-American ideas.
I wasn’t the artist you thought I was so
I apologized profusely.
It was all so imperfect, the nights entwined
uncovered truths.
We just did not know what to do with it all.
Babies in 95, you said.
Sex will be sublime, you said.
Whatever you say, I said.
I was old hat in two weeks’ time.
You were consistently never home.
I was steadily silly, and innocent.
With breath hot, canned, and sticky I
hissed into the aftershave embalmed telephone.
I stripped.
I begged.
You let me off the hook.
Clothed, I sat on a bowl
and heard the shuffle around my stall.
My palms grew wet as the enfolded my
aching face.
In the future we spoke-
it was as if we never met.
Just the way you liked it.
All gone-all
in retrospect.
Now, you and I are
perfectly
safe, separate.
PASTE POEM HERE
Good-Bye (1990)
Don’t know where, I will begin
white desert of
fresh paper
stretching forth
(a vulgar sin)
Heart knows just what to say?
Steady, dull, thump
thud
bumping
Brain is reeking with crud, decay
Taillights flicker
I stand
where you used
to be
(for the worse?)
Red, white, and blue truck
brings me to you,
Looping ink
into
shapely
words-
Glue taste on my tongue, tasty goo.
Missing you, helping me to be what I like
better than before.
Taillights flicker into black tomorrow.
I stand alone in dim today.