March Summer

The attic smells of sex,
outside wetness,
mold, winter’s ashes
and baby crocuses.
A window prefectly placed
under the point of the A of the ceiling
with those curtains I
bought on a whim
hoping you’d like them
and their elegance amid
our thriftstore furniture
and faux finish paint job,
I look through it
at the space between my car and
that jerk next door and at the grease stain
from your jeep on the street.
In bed tonight
on sheets changed
maybe last Sunday,
I will search alone for
your stains there.

Nolie is Seven in 2006

He is gap-toothed and lisping
and I want a time machine.
The digital snapshot/screensaver
is not enough.
The suffocating fear of computer crashes,
technology leap-frogging over my back,
grips me and tells me
the smile will crash
catch a virus
get wormed.
But a box, magic like snow,
may take me in 10 years
to this moment
where he spits Fruit Loops
through a gap and says
Thee what I can do?

Friction

tires on the highway on the way to work
balding on this forty dollars
to fill up my gas tank commute

NPR discussing the fall of Sadam
when the statue hit the ground
metal clanking on the cement
pieces of Hussein flying about

the Easter bunny standing
behind the first lady
late night talk shows
joking that the bunny
was humping Laura’s ass

and you rubbing yours against mine
last night with the window open
while the cat drug the bird across
the porch leaving remnants
of feathers which
this morning brushed softly
against the doorstep

Stuffed Peppers

I look forward to the skin
left in the garlic press.
I pull it out with a steak knife's tip
No other utensil is as justified and liberated.
I called in sick today
just to squeeze the cloves.
The house smells of clinging pans,
and steam
and love
and tomato
and irresponsibility.
Nolan is grateful and forgets
I am neurotic.
I wear a t-shirt that clings to my fat parts,
the sides that want to roll over my jeans.
He stares as I clear plates,
he does not miss
memories of me
when I was
his skinny mom.

Soulspace

Soulspace

it’s the Big Bird pajamas, the only memory before 5, the bottoms of the matching set
and how toddler life is a little backside covered in baby blue bloomers
with skinny legs popping out like a small bird, the irony

it’s railroad ties in the backyard, only five feet high when I visited Gateswood Drive
as an adult and the deep laughter followed by tears when I remembered them
as the Mount Everest only my male siblings could climb

the bicycle from 1982 on that warm Christmas when no one had ever heard of testing out a bike-gift in December and the thought that Jesus himself had blessed the blue 10-speed and each ride around the block was another prayer of thanks

damn, if it isn’t the slumber party of 1986 after reading a Judy Bloom book
and the novelty of whispering in a group of pre-teen Catholics, “I masturbate,” and the silence that followed all the way until morning and the cruelness of them, and well,

the fact that I really didn’t even know what it was but my desire to make clever conversation from a book I read took over and testing out a new word was more pleasureable than the activity I would not discover until well into the 1990’s

and it’s The Scarlet Letter and Hester Pryne and To Kill a Mockingbird and eventually Longfellow and Plath and that professor from the community college who turns out, now that it’s 2006, I see was probably a guy just like me

the times I wake in the night and pull my car over and whisper over and over to rememebr when I don’t have a pen and the keyboard I think will need attention when I pound on it, the sound of it better than the rain in the attic downing out lover’s moans

the Times New Roman or Arial depending on the disposition and the moon and the flow of what needs to be purged to make room for more-
the ache to share it but to hold it like babies in the wind

Lily Ann

your hands are warm like spring

let me put my feet
on yours
while you dance me
around the sun room
outside
the daffodils are droopy
while the irises
are only leafy
and I am waiting
for purple