Bi-Coastal Break-Up

Alfred Stiegliyz once
kissed another girl
in front of Georgia O'Keefe.

She had just walked into his studio
on a trip back to New York
only to find him lip-locked.

She blew him a kiss
gave him the finger and
walked out calmly,
poised like a ballerina.

Georgia
was not the kind of woman
to cause a scene.

She flew home to New Mexico
gathered all the photographs he had taken of her,
put them inside a clean, white envelop,
and mailed them back across the country with a note:

Alfred darling,

this is the only me you can have.

The desert is full of bones

and I plan to stay here.

My empty rib cage feels more open now

against the vast blue sky.

Your lens was never big enough

to catch me anyway.

You should hve known

that I could not exist in

black and white alone.

(c)Cheryl Snow White     2010

from Snow White Lies

Last Dance

Let me at least sit back up
for this one, knocking the atoms
of the coffin awry, de-connecting
a collar bone, dropping a hip,
tossing wrist to sky and slipping
clean through this old costume
I've sorely outgrown.  Let me
learn the steps as I go--
no flesh to fool us, no panting
and moaning, no words between--
just the beat, without the bloody heart.
Grab me by the gleam this time,
the silver swing of soul unhinged
and baby, blast: blast through
gravity, tear up time, nuke
this dull earthly dish
Let me shine and rise
Let me ride the blue-gold pulse
of the universe divine
Beam me up, bounce me out
Warp me in, swing me through
Anything but dark
Anywhere but down
neutrons humming loose
protons sparking apart
electrons ringing
something new
High and light
Shimmer and flow
Sing it loud now
Pulse it on out
Oh sweet black honey
eternity on your hands
you done, finally,
this time
got it
all
so right.

(c)Vivian Teter          2007

from Edge by Edge

Toadlily Press, Chappaqua, NY

Offering

I didn't recognize you
at first.
scanning the airport awaiters
my eyes touched you
and almost kept moving
but my heart
had stopped.
you were formal, unsmiling.
when did you finally smile?
hours later when the ice floe had
broken away
and wawa market
held us in suspended animation
we finally moved,
bumped against each other,
grinned like we never did
in high school --
glorified in our escape,
snug as twinkies.

you tortured me at the
gas station, leaning toward me enclessly in your car
whispering,
I'm gonna get a map, okay?
leaning into me so I had
no space of my own.
me the audience just waiting
for the kiss and aching
from the torture.
wanting to
smash my way out of your car
and run back to our midnight
bed where interrupting the rush
and cascade of clothes in the dark
you moved to kneel behind me,
gently releasing the buttons
just below the nape
of my neck.
this treatment
comes easily to you.

pauses and negative space
balance the crowd of red
loving and blue blue memories.
you offer me drowning
and stillness
and I accept.

living with you
is a breathing experiment.
a musical measure elegant with rests.
starlight in peripheral vision.
breathing in the dark.
serious,
unsmiling,
never alone.

(c)Toni Wynn          1993

from the place within where the universe resides

The Ghost

Come to tea and talk with me
Talk of days gone by...
I need to recall the past we shared
Was it sweet and dear as I remember?
Now the days close in around me
And nights are lonely.
Grasp the memories and hold on.
So quickly they pass by as a kaleidoscope,
Mixing and stirring, reflecting.
If a song would help, I'll sing
No guarantee of return
To semblance of what has been.

Please, don't leave yet...a moment more.
We are together and I feel your warmth,
Your touch so gentle and I know you are near.
Have another cup of tea, my dear,
Stay close so I can hear your voice.
Tell of our times of joy, none of sadness,
not now.  I need the peace of your company.
The pleasantness, just knowing you came
To sit with me on my birthday.
We really should have some cake
But, no matter, we don't have to partake
Night is coming and we should go.

(c)Beverley Isaksen          2007

from I'm Not Leaving Yet

Harbors

                to Joanne

We reach them as a cat reaches, rolled
as long as it can stretch and yawning.  We want
the air--by which we mean the resonance
of the salt and breeze and any mammal leaping
too far away to hear--want that great space
against our pores.  Windows?  Want them open.
Clothes:  off.  Do we think film lurks everywhere
we have skin?  Photograph that one, we say,
and that, that.  It's possible in a village
laughing with gulls to forget the way we walked
or pedaled and gasp toward a laugh of our own
that, as often as we turn, we'll never
account for the long choosing that's kept us.
Remember the old man selling pastry
and fudge, the one who'd climbed the steeple
and seen the destroyer erupt, the U-boat
surface?  He had that to tell, sprinting the sand
and street of oyster shell, and still had,
counting the coins and bills back to us.  One day
we'll riffle through our common purse for who
knows what to hand as change when someone asks.

(c)Jay Paul                    1999

from Going Home in Flood Time

The Ink Drop Press

For the Wintered Bee

In my mind she rose from nightmare songs of the carnivorous

birds of spring; rather, it was the quickening sun of a newborn

faith.

She was a mad scout from a city asleep, testing the pane

between herself and a triumphant waggle over fragile white

blooms.

I pried the sash open to admit the bewildered Lazarus bee;

but the shamrock on the sill was neglected and root-bound

like me:  soon she'd find it yielded comfort less than her

enduring sleep.

How unkind I thought it must be to find so little of a past

in her post-resurrection world--no clover honey, no swarming

hive.

So for her I would bring yellows--vibrant daffodils--from beds

more reliable than my own; we would share droplets of honey

and sweet green tea; and in her gratitude, she could never ever

sting.

But she too was laden without a queen, and me, I was just a man,

a different kind:  soon she'd come undone by my failure to re-enact

her tribal dance.

It was only in her last second days that she found too much want

in an Australian shiraz, and perished into a bottle left carelessly

unfinished.

Oh, but didn't she live; wasn't she loved!  Surely none would tell me

it was all without a purpose.

(c)Allen M. Weber

published in Skipping Stones 2007

Mindworm Press, Chesapeake, VA

Classy-fied

Seeking females,
fifty-plus,
all colors and sizes.
Come join us.
Must have spunk
and lots of class
and toasting words
to lift a glass.
A love for fun,
a gift for mirth,
a yen for adventure
at their second birth.
Look good in red,
or purple
or pink
and like wearing hats
and feather boas
oh...one more thing
must like to eat out
so have no doubt
this ad attracts
a special type of passerby
it caught your eye...
now didn't it?

(c)Phyllis Johnson          2007

from HOT and Bothered By It!

Community Press

Descending

Isolated
she lies on
a single bed.

Not a waking ray
or a soothing song
is permitted.

She smiles
throwing her bony arms
to hold me close.

I caress
her hands and cheeks
with hope.

But the letters
on her chart
brandish thorns.

for her
the shechinah
is visible,

like descending pollen
in the wilderness.

(c)Michal Mahgerefteh     2009

from In My Bustan

Poetica Publishing Company

Cinnamon Peeler's Wife (1)

I am the cinnamon       

peeler's wife.  Smell me.

            Michael Ondaatje

Night.  My hands shadow yours along my calf,
across the space between my shoulders,
my breasts, my face.

Before marriage, I imagined,
your touch, the yellow bark dust,
the surrounding scent.

In the beginning I enjoyed that marking,
an announcement of your occupation
on me, of me.

I smooth your hair,
place my mouth on your forehead, taste
droplets of dust, residue from each poor.
Inhale the spice.

4 a.m.  The coolest hour.
Now, I must remove myself to seep
in rose, rinse in buttermilk,
sprinkle vanilla and saffron.

I stand naked in the melting rain.
Only a slight scent remains
on my inner thigh, the stain of yellow dust.

mid-afternoon.  My sweet becomes sweat,
your perfume, your private.
notice the blend, marking
a slight insistence of cinnamon.

(c)Elaine Walters McFerron     2004

from Double Solidude

Green River Press

The Bedroom Clock

Reads 2 a.m.
Red digital lines
of today.

The day closed,
still as a locked church
before even the stained glass

has come to life;
shut against the sunlight
and the news that will

break into my life, a thief
who steals my time,
measured out

in pieces.
They make no sound,
except to breathe,

intake of air so silent
my lungs hurt to stay quiet,
and then, rise only by degrees,

inches that cannot be heard
for fear the news will be bad,
and the alarm will sound.

(c)Nancy Powell

from How Far Is Ordinary, 2007

Mindworm Press, Chesapeake, VA

Remembering

I remember
nights of nonstop love-making
days of never getting tired of staring into your eyes,
nights of feeling completely intoxicated by your closeness
days of anticipating just one more touch from you
nights of kissing your sweet lips
days of feeling so special, so lucky to have you by my side,
nights of holding each other close the whole night through
days of just sitting together for hours holding hands.

Oh, how I wish I could have all of this again with you,
so I don't have to spend days and nights remembering.

(c)Sandi Ratcliff

published in Skipping Stones 2004

The Grocery Game

"You're so lucky!" she exclaimed
As our carts accidentally clashed,
Hers full, mine nearly empty.
"Just look at you, you lucky girl,
No cheerios, no pudding pops,
No handy-wipes or birthday hats,
Just dried figs, yams, and tofu,
Frozen peas and pickled beets--
I'd never dare bring that lot home.
Got to go now, thery're all waiting,
Bye for now, I envy you!"
So joyously she swept along
And left me to my happy task,
To clench my heart, and force a smile,
And linger down the baby aisle.

(c)M. Lee Alexander

from Observatory, 2007

Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY

Ebb Tides

He looks at her and sees
the pain of yesterday's existence
as her eyes reflect the darkness of his
illicit past, emotions crest and ebb,
like the tides along the sandy shore
when he can look no more he walks away,
recalling her eyes' reflection of the
stranger he'd become, knowing he's
no longer the Adam in her garden.

(c)Beulah G. Skinner

published in Skipping Stones 2004

Dark Lover

Dark skin
like steaming cafe latte
or sugared cinnamon-
my favorite treats
Dark eyes
between curling lashes,
a brown pool
in which I had to bathe-
Dark hair
softly curling
about your face,
i could not stop from grasping-
Dark Botticeli lover
with whom I never spoke
but whom I had to have.

(c)Lisa Kendrick 2009

Hill Medicine

She knew the sun
          the burnt crook of nose
the dirt of fingernails
          the voices on the evening wind

She knew the secret
          of the green leaves
the churning waters
          that carried fears away

She let the wind speak to her
          not always listening
the stout wood barn door
          shut out lots of noise

the force she felt flew
          from her slender fingers
inherited from the medicine
          in her mother's hands

Not all voices familiar
          some spoke from plants
some once bore children
          none hers

They rose with the smoke
          of campfires uncounted
they spoke to her soul
          in their own private language

It smelled in her nose
          tasted her tongue
the dust in her eyes made her see
          the hill was alive

The deer heard, rabbit too
          the bear and antelope,
snake eagle and fox
          they all understood

Understood nothing
          without her
the untangled umbilical cord
          returned to her unchallenged

What sacrifices could be offered
          to give the answers she needed
the waning moon so cold
          to a lonely woman

They found her--twist of dried root
          bowl of spiderwebs
nothing to claim
          riches in handfulls of dirt

Cleansing crept like a sliver of light
          into the sweat lodge of her mind
upward with a steaming prayer
          down again in the palms of her hands

In her but not of her
          belonging to the ancient mountains,
the far distant sea, a secret
          held in a rock in the river

Dirt, hair, bone and blood,
          behind the wheel, in front
geography unimportant,
          just home.

(c)Jack Callan and Mary Curro

published in Skipping Stones 2007

Athens

Nothing special in Athens except
about the Parthenon, the Acropolis, and outside the city,
the wind that blows across Poseidon's temple
onto blue sea, the coast.
We eat roasted lamb; we taste eggplant and garlic.
The coast is hot and blue, and everyone is nervous.
They live to be good hosts.
Remember Penelope?

In the city, packs of wild dogs roam the streets
terrorizing children.
If you remember, this is how the squirrels became our enemies,
they stopped fearing men.
The dogs think "What can man do to me?"

Red fox dog, the men bend over to offer me,
some teeth are rotten but most are white and unspoiled,
they bend to half-opened windows--
red fox dog--let me breathe, I say,
in the heat that presses down my soul and burns my skin,
I feel like saying nothing, getting into the shade,
luckily hot rock heat is blowing wind,
where they prayed to Poseidon on the red clay earth rocks
leading down to the sea and Aegeas first caught sight
of the black flag choosing his desperate ride
down through the wind to the cold blue sea.

Red fox dog.  Athenian night.
In the Dionysius theater,
one crumbled backdrop,
one blue night, one star above,
we hear the voices of the Greek people
and we know by their songs that they love their children.
This is Aegeas' curse.

Red fox dog, barking in packs,
the ancient dust, Athena's white face, stiffens my hair.
I am another pillar standing with my sisters and brothers
on a windy hill.

Red fox don, Athenian nights.
As the cab driver picks his nose,
sucks his sugared tea and replaces it in a plastic drink caddy
hanging beside the grimy steering wheel, shrugs,
he'd rather not take us anywhere, ashes fall lazily off the dash,
he doesn't shave or bathe,
he lights a cigarette in the warm blue night--
and yet the tiny women walk by
in short soft pink dresses with matching plastic pink purses,
their olive skin is perfect, immune to Athen's slow death.
This is Athena's blessing.

Red fox dog-Athenian nights.
On the mountain behind me, razed by speculators,
a pack of wild poodles is barking, enemy
of the nightwalk on the mountaintop cut stones
to the white orthodoxy where inside
God's fire paints maroon and teal and gold.

We eat Athenian nights.
We lick its dogs.
We drink the glue sky and sit on top of the white church
while wild dogs bark at our feet.

Red fox dog, Athenian nights.
Can you see in the distance a hearty stone Zeus laughing,
years of mischief and still the people of Athens are always late.
So spake Lysistrata.
The earth's own woman.

(c)Jill Winkowski                    2008

published in Skipping Stones Vol VI

Ut pictura poesis

for MRC

My mind's camera will dwell to keep

Images of moments so easy to share:

Your smile ethereal as grace,

Sparkling eyes like moonlight on the Gulf,

The soft topography of breasts,

Warm lips assimilating mine,

The strong sculptural curve of your back

Melting beneath my kisses,

As April snow beneath swelling sun.

All this for nothing,

Nemo, 

Me.

As if some better symbiant

Borrowing my lapsed body,

Spoke perfect syllables in an unknown tongue.

Why did I ask about your magic hair?

Words too honest and tender for my ragged mind.

What foolish prattle will next be uttered,

When my charmer has left me

And the real self sputters,

A motor without a spark?

Only now,

Without a claw to rip the fabric of the night,

Might I search for a fortress of eternity

To protect my livid newborn hope.

Instead just here I lie,

Letting you wrap me into a nest of minutes,

Unbroken and unstained.

Failure, exile thee to a distant land!

For if you return with armies of despair,

I will die laughing with remembrance

Under your sullied blade.

(c)James F. Gaines          2010

Christina's World

after Andrew Wyeth


Is she you or me or all
of us when we are
lonely, isolated from the world
of the living lying far beyond
our reach?  We struggle,
drag, and claw, helpless crabs
prowling for the ocean.

Art spectators mesmerized by
this vulnerable girl flung into the pinching
and pricking weeds the color of whites
after laundering with darks or the batter
of a recipe gone wrong.  Monochromatic
colors invade the murky, unmemorable
anytown New England.

Her dress is pink-blushing,
life where none exists:  hinting
at health and happiness not enjoyed.
Her legs sprawled
in a lifeless pose.
A slight, sheepish
light - a timeworn wedding band - encircling
the dilapidated farmhouse:  her promised land.

But she never gains ground:
Devoured - like the true colors
of paint mixed in rinse water - by
the bleakness.  The sky, the color of
city snow:  the farm -
a tomb to engulf her.

(c)Martha V. Maurno

published in Skipping Stones 2004

Hear

her back is turned to me.
I imagine I see where her
slightly pooched hair
hides her hearing aids.
she looks plain that way
like the back of an old building
without windows that
conceals all but its plainness.
from behind she is a movie screen
before the previews start,
an immovable parked car
stuck in silent snow.
when all I see is
the back of her head
I know I can scream
the way crazed fans do
or make battlefield sounds
and kamikaze crashes;
they bounce off her
as quietly as sunshine on sunglasses.
when her back is turned,
she cannot hear unkind whispers
that might rattle me
and sometimes do.
hers is a backless world
of expressive faces and
requests to repeat what
the rest of us hear the first time.
when her back is turned,
noisy streets are swept away
and she tells me the sound she hears
is the chatter of angels.
I ask what they say
I tell her I want to hear them too
and she opens her arms
to me

(c)B. Koplen

published in Skipping Stones 2005

and in Ripples

Innocent

Baby Blue the silent sky
Innocent her eyes
Baby green the garden path
Innocent her steps
Coffee grounds in hand
To place that dark and grainy
Homage of the morning
At the feet of the azaleas,
Petition for petals to come: 
          Shouting Cerise
          Singing Life Force
          Murmuring Forever

...Then On the firewood rack
She saw the Cooper's hawk
Talons gripping the iron rod

Eyes searching, head turning

Watchful, mortal, her steps
Backward

(c)Anne Meek

published in Skipping Stones 2004

and in Ripples

She Inherited the Morning Star

She inherited the morning star
and the hymns of purple roses
seduced my naive presumptions
dancing beneath stained-glass
twilight tarnished by centuries
of metallic rain.

Angels congregate over the passion-
seas of lust, shaping the daylight
in her image and blessing the indigenous
people crossing her liquefied serenity
in small rafts built from the essence
of high civilization.

She claims the sun as her husband
and the moon as her first born daughter,
the pulsating stars are her reigning sons
but before she can finish her ritual...

I wed the night, climb the tallest tree
of the pulsar, sing slave songs while sitting
on the shoulders of an eclipse before
returning to my thatched roof hut where
my wife stirs my dreams in a cast iron pot.

Clay statues of prophets meditate
beneath her timeless wind-chimes

Her message swings in the far corner hammock
humming divinity's mating call.

She folds her spirituality in black velvet
and places the honied residue on my lips.

(c)Synnika Lofton               2004

published in Skipping Stones 2004

and in Ripples

Muktar Bibi

Born into poverty.
Muslim child, daughter, innocent heart.
Pakistani village,
protecting a younger brother
punish the family name.

Dragged across an empty field,
screaming, kicking, begging.

Tears of shame,
unable to look at her father.

Standing outside a mud hut,
five men take their turn,
gun to head,
no shame,
their mothers unable to speak,
fear of reprisal.

Mukhtaran held to her faith in God,
not wishing to end her shame by taking her life,
standing up to those with power.

Raise the children under the lantern of truth,
teaching respect for all human life,
child of God, blessed with grace.

Mukhtaran Bibi,
a voice heard in the wilderness of pain,
screaming for justice in the morning sun,
Pakistani sun, world sun, knowing the truth of your faith in God.

Teach the children, free their hearts, raise their minds to a world

held bright.  Ride on the wave of

freedom, no longer hiding in shame, for you did nothing.

(c)Joel D. Marable               2006

published in Skipping Stones 2006

and again in Ripples

Dancing with Angela

I think I met her in France
or maybe it was Virginia...
We danced at some school event
but I don't think it was the prom.
I smelled perfume on her neck
as we danced and sweated together.
I remember she wore glasses and had brown hair.
And her eyes were brown too
as she looked at me somewhat bewildered.
Who were we anyway?
I knew we weren't surfers.
We were miles away from the sea.
"Little surfer, little girl..."
Make my heart unwhirl like the years
and all the dances lost in time
along with old songs and movies
I saw many years after the prom.
Like Fred and Ginger in Top Hat
or Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.
They're all gone and so is Anagela
hopefully not to the final resting place
where all the old movie stars go.
But soon enough we'll be there too,
even though that was our only dance,
she with her brown eyes and perfume
and me with an open book.

(c)Joseph Lewis              2008

published in Skipping Stones, Vol VI

encounter

"Losing focus in ordinary rituals is common under such intense desire"

- from a horoscope -

A vessel wants filling, doesn't it?

She needs his eyes to own her,

here, this close, she will follow,

drop her belongings, not look back,

agree to be wife two or three or four

to please him, fold him up as a god,

wait for his favor, drown.

as she slowly brushes her hair,

his influence falls away, brush,

brush, the safety, brush, the heat,

brush, brush, brush, brush, until

she is empty once again.

(c)Shann Palmer            2008

published in Skipping Stones

Genesis

for Catherine

The doctor, hip bumping the door, appears
with you, blanketed, cradled like a lesson.
Mother blood in hair, you do not paddle
a cry toward me.  You do not open
your eyes like a creator.  He would swear
he carries you in the fluorescent hall,
but you sluice into me.  You may not have
judged if it is good--what you fashion
of me--worthy of your heart and lungs,
but I, cut through and sculpted by runoff,
temperatures streaming, I already am young.

Jay Paul,               1999

from Going Home in Flood Time 

A Confession

"I dare no longer stay!"

Forgive me, Friar Lawrence,

You're not the well-intentioned,

vacillating failure

I've always taught,

A weak man leaving Juliet in the tomb to die.

Like you, I would have stayed through the night

But I didn't.

"Will he survive?"  I asked the ER doctor on the evening shift,

Her military about-face gave me hope.

"I don't know."

George turned to me from his gurney,

Resolute, stubborn.

This was his own journey;

No tears need christen it.

He knew its end.

Finally, I looked at my watch.

"Well,

I've got to get home, walk the dog,

And get ready for tomorrow."

Friar Lawrence,

My exit wasn't scripted.

Why didn't I know

He'd die the next day?

before the vernal equinox.

(c)Christy Lumm               2008

published in Skipping Stones, Vol VI

Pilgrimage to Pieta

With grace and cheer, despite her need to stop
and rest, to catch her breath too frequently,
the widow Mary trod these rocky hills
and hard-pan valley roads from Nazareth.
Five days in searing sun, five nights she and
a dozen pilgrims shared their fellowship
and food and space, and yet she sat alone
within her weary heart.  In numbers safe
outside the city walls, the tent now set
to stay a while, they'd merge tomorrow with
the crowds of worshipers through temple gates
to pray, and later share their Seder meal.
Arising Passover before the sun,
she walked the slope in search of time and place.

When Mary found the garden where long years
ago she'd stood dismayed, the empty tomb
where her own murdered son was laid in pall,
where she had failed to recognize a soul
who asked, "Why seek you life among the dead?"
The sun now shown across Jerusalem.
The past weighed heavy on her heart. She sat
upon a rock and laid a flower down
with gentle hands among the weeds.  She stood
in silent grace and trod, deliberate,
the few remaining steps uphill past storm
and butter memories of violence,
of midnight dark at noon, of shaking earth,
a cross, and she was standing on the Skull.

On Golgotha she knelt, poured water from
a skein into her hand and splashed her face,
gave thanks and drank.  She muttered his last words:
"El'i, El'i, La'ma sa-bach-tha'ni?"
"My God, God why hast thou forsaken me?:
She stood, descended gradual brown slope,
pale green awakening before her feet,
and shuffled south.  Midday, at Bethlehem
she bought a dove and crouched in shadow at
a stable, looked back toward Jerusalem.
When she released the dove, her heart rose with
the bird.  A smile quivered quiet, spoke,
"Who is my Son?  My Son, my Lord.  Thy will,
not mine, be done," her Pieta resolved.

(c)pete freas          2008             

from Mary, Mary, Mary: 
Visions of Grace

Wide Earth

The smell of the juniper bush, the gin
And rum mixing on the night air
Carried on a breeze that makes the hair on my neck
Prickle.  Every heartbeat pulse that sounds on a dark night
Echoes through ears hidden by hair that holds
A heritage.  A quiet so deep you can hear the long gone
Chants, the shuffle of soft leather over sand, the roar
Of the fire, the keening of women.

The stars are spilled salt across a black velvet sky
Hung like ropes from the four corners of the Universe.
With the Earth so wide I sometimes forget the parcel
I'm on, packaged away like an old childhood toy,
Whispered about like the factory mingles with the clouds
Churning out its own fabricated tomahawks and headdresses
Against the backdrop of growth and industry.

I peel the sweat-soaked shirt from my body like
I peel the curled tobacco leaves one from the other,
Remembering my birth comes from the sweat of a thousand men,
Of forgotten ritual, of names signed to thousands of pieces of paper
To be tucked away for centuries
Tenor voices urge me from within to find comfort in the heat of battle,
In the warmth of blood, the humidity of neglect
While the moon, lidless and stark winks at me from its

corner of the sky

In commiseration.

(c)Kindra McDonald

published in Skipping Stones 2007

April

Clothesline strung
from porch to pole,

I gather your shirts, hold
them close like years,

follow the garden path, shape
of your footprints.

April unfolds lilies,
forsythia bushes burst.

You clear branches, rake
flower beds,

plant my favorite pink
geraniums, call me honey.

I smile, lean like an old
fence post pressed to your chest.

Touch you like a delicate
bulb, satisfied.

(c)Ann Shalaski          2007

from world made of glass

The Unrepentant Hour

I wonder about poems written in celebration
of morning--of lying naked in bed till noon
amid the sweet, unhurried disarray of discarded

covers, just listening to the slow wheel of a summer
day's noises revolve overhead, the ceiling fan on its lowest
setting. I would do the same but for the remembered

voice of my mother, snapping like castanets
in my ears: no girl should stay abed so late when
so much needs doing. What did it matter it was

Saturday? I darted out from under the gauze of
mosquito netting to dust the furniture and boil rice,
bleach laundry in the sun and water the drooping

ginger lilies, the marigolds, those bitter queens in ruffled
finery. It did no good to envy children in the street,
playing at marbles or with their invented toys--most likely

they had done their share of chores or would soon
be led, under the sign of a pinched earlobe. And so
there are some things I will always know: the line

on my finger by which to measure the right
amount of water for the perfect pot of rice, how to turn
the dullest leftovers into a dish so unforgettable

my friends will beg and beg, years after, for the recipe,
how to tell by the shape of clouds which fish will be
plentiful at market, or recognize by smells that carry

on the air if it is rain tomorrow or a scorching day.
Certain winged insects crawl out of their hiding places
to tell the change of seasons, and in complete

abandon throw themselves on any surface that
resembles water. When finally rain comes, then ice,
sometimes there is a little more time for wintering

and dreaming. The sky deepens now as I write this;
it's late afternoon and I'm near the bottom
of the cup of coffee I've been nursing

since noon, near the end of this poem
which has become a kind of homage to stilled
time, and also answer to its calling. Even my mother,

faithful disciple of womanly industry, succumbed
and listened. One rain-washed afternoon when the porch
steps were flooded with a surplus of peach and yellow

petals, I looked through the keyhole of my parents'
bedroom inside an unrepentant hour: her thighs,
creamy magnolias pressed open on the sheets,

everything so still, even the clock on the mantel
that did nothing to hurry, though it marked
from time to time the passing tremors.

(c)Luisa Igloria 2005

from Trill and Mordent

published by Word Tech Editions