Poetry
Color Therapy
Forthcoming in The Raleigh
Quarterly, Fall 2008 Issue
Red is a wrong stove burner
left on while I do dishes,
check e-mail and feed my son carrots and cereal.
Red is my hair, feet and ankles after a two-mile run.
I can't shake the inflamed blush for hours.
Red is my four-year-old
son’s energy
that scratches and tears through
the curtain of his day.
Red is a rash on my back that won't heal,
red is the inside of my lip
after kissing you on the night before our wedding.
Red is wax pooling in three
mounds
on our new beige carpet.
The thick candles a promise,
consuming space on our dresser,
their flames flicker & die
to the ceiling fan’s metronome above our bed.
Red is my December birthday surprise
& Christmas wrap all over the living room floor,
wicker and plastic trash cans close to exploding.
Red is the seven-week-old
life dripping out
of me on the bathroom tile —
she was
our Scorpio daughter.
***
Carport
Carpenter
Published in Spring/Summer 2008 Issue, Main Street Rag
My
hands scarred below the knuckles,
thumb nails split,
yellow like old caulk at the nailbed.
A thin circle on the left hand,
tanned reminder of a tossed commitment.
I
build a carport in suburban D.C.
for a one car, four-person family
where the summers suck vacuumed humidity
& the winters ice glass roads.
Now to cut the wood, sand the planks,
measure with a ruler.
My tool belt bangs against my hip
as I wrestle fickle nails with torn flesh.
My
body is a '78 Chevy El Camino,
pewter blue, silver rails along the bed,
creaky on turns with shitty acceleration on entry ramps.
I wonder myself how I smoke and work,
but I have strong teeth and don't need an ashtray.
***
Domestic Duties
(For Billy Collins)
Published in the Kakalak 2008 Poetry Anthology
You are the
coffee mug and the honey,
the wax and the sponge,
and the pink roses blushing against our house.
You are the laundry folder, the trash collector,
the dishwasher, and the Barbecue King.
However, you are
not the mop,
the vacuum cleaner or the Fantastik.
You are certainly not the water
running down our tap into my used Dasani bottle.
It is possible
you are the old ice cubes
in our freezer. Maybe you’re even the
Tupperware containers tumbling
on the floor every other day.
Perhaps you
resemble the pear trees
in our front yard, but not quite.
Not quite.
Speaking on the
plentiful imagery of the domestic world,
I am the sound of coffee brewing at 6:30 am on Monday.
I also am the soft eggs
you break in the metal bowl,
the milk you taste in your coffee
and the lemon you bisect for your evening tea.
I am also the
glass vase, the dish towels,
and the ironing board.
But don’t worry,
I am not the coffee mug and the honey,
nor the roses that bloom for a few days.
You must always be the rose I place in my vase.
***
Windhover 2007, NC State's Literary and Visual Magazine
Shucking
There are a few things I miss about Charleston—
the sweetgrass basket stalls on
Broad Street, housing wrinkled brown women.
They etch their African past for tourists.
I walked by them to the sailor's house,
built in 1782 by a Polish general
in the Continental Army.
Two flights to where the alabaster steeple
gazes over the cherry wood bed.
That warm September he held me and called me
sometimes four times a day.
By January, I was the oyster muck
slung from his knife.
She had long legs with crooked teeth,
and he laughed with her.
So I closed the window because
the temperature was never right.
***
Spring 2007 issue of the Iodine Poetry Journal
Sex Ed
When I was twelve,
my mother left me alone
To find out about sex.
She was too embarrassed.
Sex was my father
Watching Playboy videos
On Saturday afternoons after
Solid Gold.
In her musty room strewn with
Pink underwear,
Abby shared her Rachel the Cavewoman books
with mashing bodies and penetration.
But I didn't know what
They were doing, exactly.
So I read Dear Ann Landers
And found out about celibacy,
Which didn't make sense, either.
But I found my key in
A middle school encyclopedia
With a red shiny cover
And new plastic smell.
My father picked it up at Safeway
When he came home with a six-pack.
A penis inserts into the vagina
Under "Sexual Intercourse"
In black and white with a pinhole illustration.
I closed the cover and
hid the book next to
Watership Down and Charlotte's Web.
***
Published in the Fall 2006 issue of The Mom Writers Literary Magazine
ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)
He disappears when I open
The passenger side
Of my Mustang door.
Lean legs pump to a rhythm
Only he knows.
I never lose sight of him.
Near the busy street.
He must touch gray streetlights.
Wide ones with plugs on
Either side.
Then mailboxes and
A fire hydrant
With a silver chain around its neck.
I run.
My one stride matches his three.
But he's fast and
Crosses
The street
Without looking.
My eyes sting when I hit him.
He falls to the dry grass.
"Don’t do that!" I cry.
Why can't he stay with me?
Tomorrow he runs away again.