The Sisterhood

This morning I finally succumbed to antibiotics.
I tried the last eight days to defeat the virus
that had overtaken my body with
good food,
rest,
and my own bed,
but my cough only got worse from all of my good intentions.
Last night the familiar rattle of bronchitis set in
and I found myself up coughing most of the night.
Today I am wheezing.
That’s enough for me to pick up the phone and start in with the heavy ammo:
Inhalers and Z packs.
It all started when I got pneumonia in my twenties.
Ever since then my Achilles heel is my lungs.
Now, whenever I get sick things head south real fast.
Usually, I end up with a bottle of antibiotics and an inhaler by my bed.
It’s an inherited defect.
Everyone in my family has weak lungs.
My mother’s had pneumonia about five times.
Her mother died of lung cancer and never smoked.
My aunt died of lung cancer.
My mother’s aunt died of lung cancer
and everyone in the group’s had pneumonia.
It’s like belonging to a strange sisterhood
where membership means a lifetime of difficult breathing.
I wish I were a member of something else.

The Yellow Bus

The yellow bus is capable
of everything
Summer.
I walk on a willow
swaying walnuts
and branches,
a woman on her back
split into bitterness.
Late my singing,
the back door opens,
and I am seized with greenery.
How petty!
First and foremost
you must ask,
why
have I eaten the icebox
and everything in it?
The plums were for breakfast.
Now I have nothing
but the smell of cleanliness.
It is a kind of borrowed pleasure
easily forgotten
with the setting of the sun.
And when tomorrow comes
I will be hungry again.
What then?
What will I eat?
The apples and cans and bottles of beer,
are no more.
The cardboard they came in
has been decimated.
The black shadows come between me
ribbed and slender,
waking me in the morning,
and still
all I have is crimson.

An Early Winter

This Fall,
Winter has come early.
Temperatures are already in the twenties at night
and the forties during the day.
The leaves,
what few strugglers are left,
hold on to their branches
like newly docked sailors
clutching prized Geisha’s.
The squirrels, a rare sight these days,
seem weary to relinquish their coveted tree holes,
and have already closed up shop.
Only a lone buck
makes his way into my backyard
to nibble on greenery
before disappearing into the forest.
Inside,
I am curled up too,
dreaming of a fire in my fireplace
and a cup of hot cocoa.
The thought of going out
even with the protection of
long underwear,
a hat,
gloves,
a coat,
and a scarf,
leaves me shivering.
Florida is looking better and better.

Short Poem

What's the difference
in the end?

I Me Mine

I have been reaching for other people’s words.
Frank’s
and Anne’s
and Mary’s.
They make their way on to the page
so easily
I forget they are not mine.
When I was sixteen and dancing for three hours a day,
words used to come to me all the time
like a flood,
a damn,
busted wide open.
They would spill out on to my page,
or napkin,
or whatever I had near me.
I would hear them in my head
when I walked down the school hallways
and later when I rode home in the back of my father’s Ford.
They were always with me,
my constant companions.
Now,
when I listen I hear nothing,
just the spin of my mind
revving over and over
like a car unable to get in to the right gear.
There are too many problems now
for me to listen to.
My mother,
father,
sister,
lover,
house,
dog.
I can’t hear myself think.
Or rather
I can’t stop myself from thinking
so I can just listen
to my words.
I remember the joy
of locking myself away
with pen and paper
and not coming out
till what was inside of me
found life on the page.
It was like an orgasm.
A relief.
A cleansing better than I could ever give myself
in the tub.
That relief kept me sane.
In touch with the present moment and myself.
It kept me grounded more than God
or my parents,
or any boyfriend ever could.
My words
were my salvation,
my oxygen,
my secret way out
by going in.
Lately I have been scared
to trust them
and they
in turn,
have vanished.
I do not blame them,
for abandoning me,
I abandoned them first.

Without The Rain

Without the rain,
the soft pitter of drops,
I would not exist.
It is like that now.
The sound I crave
is the least intrusive.
I have tried to get used to the idea
of wailing,
screams, and shrieks.
But year after year,
it is always the same,
the sound I long for
is whispered,
gentle
as a lover kissing my ear.
A softness
I can sink down into
and inhale
like pink clouds
on their way to sunset.

Ride

What are we doing?
What are we doing with our days?
Throwing ourselves into the traps of others.
Alcoholics and dead end relationships.
Spending hour after hour contemplating another.
Perfectly talented people accomplishing nothing with their lives.
Rather than explore themselves,
they are busy following their neurosis
into the gutters of stupidity.
Then they wonder how they got there.
I know,
I have been there too.
Hour after endless hour,
lost,
unable to feel myself,
unable to know which way is up.
What a sad sad existence.
The talented not satisfied
merely to create
art.
No,
that would be too easy.
What challenge is there in that?
We have to fuck it up.
We have to go down the hole of Hell
and serve the God of darkness.
Then only then,
do we feel we are alive.
It takes a brave soul to say,
“enough”, and reach for a different hand to hold.
My mind spins round like a carousel
and my hand reaches out for the colorful streamers
of family,
love,
and fear.
But I must not touch them.
I must hold on to the reigns
till the spinning stops.
I must stay on to my ride
and let the animal inside guide me.
I must be content with the steady up and down
knowing that when it finally stops
I will have gotten to where I am supposed to be.

Mayonnaise

Last night she called me in a panic
frantic to get to her class,
and unable to figure out how to get there.
She accused me of taking all her money
and seemed to have no idea how to call Access a Cab
or the other three transportation services I arranged for them.
She said it was my fault
and now she was going to miss her class.
It’s always my fault.
It was my fault that I loved my father more
than her growing up.
It was my fault I tried to bring order in to chaos
and honesty into a house of lies.
It was my fault
I was born half-Jewish
and reminded her of my father.
I had his eyes
and eyebrows and nose.
I had his sense of humor,
a humor she never understood.
I loved watching football with him,
and playing ping-pong at half-time,
and eating Oreo cookies together.
We both found humor in the tragic
whereas my mother would just find
the tragic.
Everything to her was a crisis.
A drama.
A three-act play
that had to be resolved in one act.
I guess I could sum it up like this:
My father and I loved corn beef and bagels
with mustard.
My sister and my mother were
mayonnaise all the way.

Yes, We Can

I can’t help but smile
now that it’s over
and he has been elected.
He,
the unlikely candidate.
He,
the rock star.
He,
the man who says, “yes, we can.”
I feel giddy inside when I think of him,
like a young girl at a Davy Jones concert.
He has given me back my faith
and my optimism.
I look at him
and think to myself,
“If he can, so can I.”
I think about him when I am at the gym
and struggling to do one more round.
He wouldn’t give up.
I think about him
when I doubt my future
and my finances and if I will ever escape
Nashville.
Yes, we can.
I think about him
when I want to throw in the towel
and say it is too hard
and I am too old
and I don’t have it anymore.
Yes, we can.
I think about his obstacles,
being black in a white world,
losing his parents,
having the weight of slavery upon his back,
and a world of prejudiced people to win over.
Yes, we can.
I think about his grace.
His humility.
His ability to put his mind on what he wants
when he wants.
Yes, we can.
I think about his eloquence.
His drive.
His determination.
His ambition.
Yes, we can.
I think about where he has set the bar for himself in his life
And where I want to set it for mine.
Yes, we can.
Yes, we can.
Yes, we can.
Thank you President Obama.
Thank you.

Eating Meatloaf with a Spoon

Waking up
squirrel
not just
black
or paper files
but amp loud
eagle.
The way lamp face stares
at you
when you’re hungry
and alone
in a new world.
How could it be
crying
furniture
in three corpses?
The old lady in the cafeteria
eating meat loaf with a spoon.
The dog lapping at the pail
cold
as a museum.
You think I want to end up like that?
I am delicate.
I am the Victorian
house
of rare antiques.
No mouth.
No birds.
No summer.
I remember Santa Monica,
Polly’s pies
and walks on the beach.
That was before my dog
and Tennessee.
That was before I learned to
hide my heart.
Yes,
once upon a time
I was.

Damn Leaves

I’m tired of all this fighting.
Drain women acting like Sarah Palin.
People accusing foul
mold
and water.
The stench of buyers and realtors.
Perfume.
Failing French systems
and the leaves,
all the damn leaves.
There is nothing here I want to cling to.
Nothing I want to call my own.
October came and left without a poem.
Just psoriasis.
Now it is November
and I have met more Southern men
than I ever cared to.
What’s another $5,000
if it means my freedom?
A whore is a whore
right?
One just spreads her legs
and the other drops her price.
I think about that
when I am propositioned in this market.
We have been taught to believe
the next man,
woman,
lover,
baby,
dinner,
will be better than the last.
So we pack and move
and fly
and run
and think
the answer is somewhere else.
Sure,
I want to leave as much as the next person,
I just want to be sure
I’m taking my integrity with me.