Because It Crumbled 

in an Unnamed Storm of ‘62

my mother and aunts still pace

like sentries along the breezeway, marking

off the night, while under pilings, we girls

hold fort in sleeping bags and damp dreams.

The men have taken their highballs to bed.

A rusty chain on the porch swing sings

its repetitions riddle.  Dogs long gone

of bone and sinew bark and race the surf

for seagulls, steady as a church creed.

In a wooden shower

warm pee puddles at the feet

of small brown bodies eager for sleep.

Our barren aunt bakes us sand biscuits

light as morning, sneaks us sodas

for supper, lets us wrap her in miles of gauze

like a mummy.  She and the mothers

are gone now, and the fathers

and every board and shingle, and

because in the mingle of shattered glass

the only reclamation was the icebox,

stocked with bluefish, fresh-caught

and still cool to touch, and because

I will never go back,

I’ll forever be twelve and tender.

No one will grow old there or bent with time.

Lap pools at low tide will hold whole worlds.

The women will shelter, their voices soft

as attic dust. And somewhere 

in some ocean, for the men’s sake,

the blues will always be running.

from Wild Plums

March on Washington, 50th Anniversary           

Technicolor this time on TV -- but look hard

among the chromatic thousands

for the ones who will forever

inescapably be black and white.  

They too are marching today: men with dogs 

and hoses, four little girls in a church, 

that fiery bus-full of students riding 

for something called freedom.

And Esther, who, on that day, would set 

her ironing aside, perch on a footstool 

to watch.  My brother, barely eleven, 

entering our small den from school,

saw her face wet and twisted.  He was 

scared, confused.  No one 

had warned him about this.  

All will be better now, she said, and he,

knowing she was someone he could trust,

sat down beside her to wait.

from There Is a Field

What I Did When

the Do Not Touch Signs

at the Modern-Mid-Century

Furniture Exhibit Drove Me Mad

Threw my leg over the rail

stroked the Eames, sexy

guard paling

as I rubbed my fingers on 

plywood and leather,

velvet soft

then climbed onto the Murphy 

bed, lured him in for

a perfect

bloom on heirloom sheets,

retro-sweet.

published in Press 53, 2021; will appear in upcoming 

manuscript, Never Live Under a Tulip Poplar

© Copyright. All rights reserved.