Mom

I remember your laugh because
it is mine.

Papayas can be good

Papayas

can be good—a very

good choice—

good when every other     fruit

is not

quite Brazilian enough.

Last Night Was a Night of I Know Nothings

Last night was a night of I know nothings.

Surrounded by scholars,

  friends

in their final year at the University

with me.

It began with one wrong;

spark ten.

     Redden, blush

     the heated rush -

           so I blend into the couch

             and fork rice into my mouth.

Listen, eyes

wide

as discussion turns

to French dictators and

literary craft of the 19th century.

When the moment comes to prove

your status among them,

then say something so

ambiguous

   it must be true

and quite insightful.

To Hear a Stranger's Breath

To hear a stranger’s breath

expelling –

  What are the worries weighing,

     pushed   from your chest?

What space is there from me to you?

Are you without a mother, too?

The bathroom is vacant

‘til you

     are there –

clean green tiles,

it smells like a

   crayon I

     had as a child –

Flush, flush

our hands are soaped
the way
they taught us;

they taught us just the same.

I chance

a mirrored glance

  and you do, too –

Now what is the distance from me to you?

On Using Your Arm as an Airbag

I like to think of myself as holding the world in my hands.

Not

power-hungry holding the world or

God-complex holding the world –

although feminism is fun

(however abused

and cliché.)

That is not my meaning.

I hold the world because

I took a personality test and got

Blue.

Mother.

Grandmother.

Peanut butter cookies and a La-Z-Boy rocking –

and I’m told

I’m a really good kisser.

Nevermind I have a natural inclination

to self-sacrifice

and listen

to bleed from the heart.

Careful it doesn’t    break.

Such a precarious thing.

Volatile,
precarious
snow globe
of a thing.

I’ll take these small hands

and stretch them
out

   cradle you all

   in a vast
      palm basin.

I can take you on my shoulders,

a piggy-ride home –

Kneel down beside you
to take up oak mantle.

I’ll help you    carry that

up the rest of the hill.

Untitled (A Familial Ode)

The toilet paper roll

must be underturned,

    not over –

The coffee filters doubled, because

any less than two

      makes for weak brew.

You love a cold glass of milk

  just after a nap

and before you go

to bed.

Your toenail shards

dot carpet

  between coffee table

and couch.

You save

papers and papers

receipts, bill stubs –

coupons

    way past date,

        littered across the counter.

There is not

one shirt in your closet

that has escaped

  a ketchup

         dribble.

You lean

across the checkout

counter to hear

your total one more time –

your aidless ear

    inclined.

The hairs on your head

hold beige blonde

like a lungful of breath.

Your burst of laugh

and temper flare –

worrisome cough

of cigarette air.

Quick to feel

and full of wounds,

   still grateful

and happy

at the little things –

and I have never

loved a man

           so much.

"Open Your World"

Easily said
from within a town
you rush through at 50
even though
the sign says
35
flanked
by broken truck cemeteries
dirty dishwater
houses
paint chipping and
gutters drooping off --

You must say this from behind
your paraphernalia
sparkling and winding
magic trinkets
propped in your patch of yard.

Would I succeed
in the same 900 square feet
without spinning wheels or
stationary flying things
with my old 9-by-11
a novice organ for a tool,
so diluted by talk in grocery stores
and small-pond politics --
"yea" if suffocated,
"yea" if not.

Remove fact --
introduce
relativity.
Please tell me
how windmills and pictures of globes
opens the world up
for me.


This is a place
flanked by rusty tin cemeteries
where you rush through at 50
even though the sign says
35