Hide

When the curtain rises
hide.
Hide under tables and chairs
and in boxes and bags.
Hide
in the closet under long dresses and coats.
Hide
under beds and inside kitchen cabinets.
Stop and listen to the feet
looking for you.
Listen to their shuffle.
Giggle silently.
Remember
the part of yourself
that hid just for fun.
Hide
in
plain
sight.

The Last Christmas

Christmas came and went,
and with it
my hopes for having the kind of Christmas I’ve always wanted.
I picked my father up on Christmas Eve
from the Jewish Community Center.
His weekly poker game didn’t happen
so he had been sitting in the lobby for three hours.
I guess some of the men must have gentiles for wives
or else they like a good cup of eggnog
as much as the next WASP.
When he got in the car,
he acted like some kind of geriatric Scrooge,
telling me about his headache
and asking me where I had been
and why hadn’t I gotten him the second he called.
I had been dealing with a whole different crisis.
Seems he was overdrawn at the bank because the check my sister sent bounced
because he had been using his ATM card and we didn’t know he was using it.
So now, he’s yelling at me,
and I’m running around to closed banks
trying to get home before my mother sets the Christmas tree on fire
or decides to jump off the roof like the Flying Nun.
By the time we walk in the door he is in full
screaming mode
telling me he wants to go back to his apartment and
“to Hell with Christmas.”
Great.
I’ve been planning this thing for days,
running around to stores to buy Russian chocolates
and flowers and fresh pasta with Bolognese sauce
just so he won’t gripe there’s no meat at the table.
Meanwhile, my mother is trying to calm him down
stuttering out a few words about Christmas
and peace and my dead dog.
I shove a pizza in the oven hoping the smell
will bribe him in to staying.
I manage to get him to sit down and eat.
He gripes that the pizza is too spicy and
that I am a terrible person and an awful daughter.
Then my mother and I try to sing Christmas Carols
while my boyfriend plays the piano.
We make it halfway through Silent Night
before my father starts yelling in the background that we are giving him a headache
and he wants to go home.
Twenty minutes later
we are in the car taking both of them back to their apartment.
Christmas Eve lasted all of two hours.
I hadn’t even unwrapped the firewood to start a fire.
The stores had barely closed
and there were still cars in the parking lot.
On the way home
I thought about all the other Christmas’ he had ruined for me.
Maybe it’s because he’s Jewish/atheist
or because he believes religion is the root of all evil.
I don’t know and I don’t care.
For one night I wish he’d just shut up.
I mean it’s not like I’m hanging crosses on the wall
or have a manger scene set-up in my living room.
All we’re doing is drinking eggnog and eating cookies
and singing.
All we’re trying to do is make memories.
New memories.
The next day I made Christmas dinner,
and brought my mother over to eat with us.
I brought my dad a To Go Plate.

Grasping At Breakfast

What comes out isn’t pretty.
It’s all hands and
fingers and toes
grasping at breakfast
and love.
I wish I had a laugh for this condition.
But I don’t.
Left to my own lips I am violent
and thirsty.
I imagine figs ablaze
and the deep red of morning
coming to take me away.
A beautiful woman once,
with teeth like a pearl
smiling
at strangers and spoons,
I never worried when bills came
or my seeds washed away with the rain.
I only smiled and smiled
like some idiot
sitting on a float in the Macy’s Day Parade.
Now I am all nubs.
Fingernails chewed down to the stubs.
Hair flat as a postcard.
Eyes filled with worry.
I am losing my battle with life.
There is too much I can’t control.
My soul is dying
like a starfish left out in the sun
unable to reach the tide.
I am screaming.
Can’t you hear?
That sorrowful November,
and December,
and July,
the days ran from my veins
like hot cocoa.
The dog inside me
whining for food.
And yet
I know not what
I hunger for.

Sugar

Sugar is the Anti-Christ.
I am positive.
It is over the counter heroine.
The drug that needs no prescription
or FDA approval.
It is the enemy lurking on tables and shelves,
in cookies and cakes,
in pies and in tins.
It is the white gown begging for one last dance.
The jailed doughnut destined to break out.
The chocolate soufflé that never sinks.
It is the hunger that keeps growing
no matter how much you feed it.
Sugar is lollipops and taffy,
the frosting that can never be licked clean
from the stainless steel mixing bowl.
It is the birthday cake you never threw out.
It is an uncomplicated hymn
you can never sing just once.

Nellie

I did not come for you,
though I wanted to.
I saw your little face
begging and sorrowful,
head cocked to one side
wondering why you were in a cage,
so young.
I did not come for you
through the rain and the cars
and the shoppers.
I was too tired,
too old,
too worn down
from my life in a cage.
Now,
breakfast and love
and the desert sun
are all bones in my closet.
You’ll move off
to some grass chair
planting words
and rhymes
in New York City,
while I will stay
in the study
ripe as a peach
rotting in the windowpane.

Throwing Mud Balls

Look at that pot
that hole,
the one you have fallen into
year after year.
Can you not see it?
It is the same one
in the exact same spot,
and yet
you keep falling in
again and again.
Have you not eyes?
You say you can see
but there you are again
in the mud and the muck.
You say you have arms
but you do not use them to pull yourself out.
You say you have legs
but you do not move them.
You only stand there,
waist deep,
with that look upon your face,
the same one you had when you were five
and Emily Schuttee threw a mud ball
that hit you in the mouth.
Forty years later
the world is throwing mud balls at you
and you stand there with your mouth open wide
catching each and every one of them.

Last Night

Last night,
slamming the door,
I told you what lovers say.
December would come in a dream
sleeping till dawn
and the crows
would have their cocktails
alone.
You had no reply,
but sipped your ice
like blood
and waited for my tears.

Happy

In winter
I send myself
to the end of the week,
to the milkweed morning of mistletoe
where everything is new
as a dream.
There,
kneeling with my grandmother,
I ring the bell
and sing into the basin of silver
all my questions:
Will I marry?
How old will I be when I die?
Will I ever love?
She smiles at my naiveté
whispering
secrets she has never spoken
in my ear.
I will be happy she says.
Happy?
For too long now,
when asked if I could see the stars in the sky,
all I could utter was,
“I see black and mud.”
Happy?
Perhaps she has the wrong girl.
I am the bruised daisy
crawling toward God.
The cracked bread in the corner
crying misshapen tears.
The wingless rabbit cowering each night
by a bowl of soured milk.
I am second thoughts and doubts
and powdered sorrow left on the bathroom floor.
I look into her eyes
and again she says, “you will be happy.”
And for a moment,
I believe her
as if the sun were a bone I could bite into and hold.

Once A Keyhole

Once
a keyhole
came
and crawled through my mind.
I spoke daytimes
and put traces of dreams in my bed.
It is like that in families.
The jewel learns the nipple
like a body of bones.
You come to me
almost a prison,
and wear truth like silk,
a castle of lies and fingers
and say everything
I want to boat is no more.
My dog,
my cut,
my tulips.
Nothing will stop my mouth
but an architect rushing like a blood clot
to my brain.
Today my body is useless,
a delicate box of Kleenex
waiting to be torn and ripped.
This is my history,
my dance,
my fire.
I am the square bulb rising.
The fat metaphor.
The actress in the corner
eating my eight lovers
two by two.
Where could I go
where I would not be
forced
to swim
naked as a fish
in my own pool of circumstance?

White Curtains

The curtains here
are white
and hang like dead birds.
I have thought of mornings without them,
the naked glass reflecting blue and purple
into my eyes.
The scene inside left open to my neighbors,
disorderly conduct,
threads unkempt,
and the smell of rotten apples
on water stained windowsills.
My life is a picture book of perfect,
each night
a sweet pudding of lovemaking,
the rip of flesh and the floating bed.
You on your knees,
my body open,
ripe as a plum
ready to receive you.
I think perhaps we are selfish,
leaving so many
with nothing but muslin to look upon.