“George’s problem is he’s too affectionate
– he expresses himself”
one woman confided loudly
in a restaurant
unlike the usual complaint
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Copyright 2015
Tag: America
WANT DO YOU WANT FOR QUARTERS?
All the fat girls in town
had congregated in this Laundromat
to giggle at a skinny hippie.
When they sat, mouths agape,
stomachs bulged more than their breasts.
Everywhere, there’s a pecking order.
The manager in her blue scarf and coat
fluttered in to chase neighborhood children out.
“They mess the place up. I don’t want them.”
Kids, kids, kids, she muttered
raking in quarters – all this bitterness
robed in garments of honey and bees.
As for me, another day,
another dollar, down the drain.
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Copyright 2015
ALWAYS SOMETHING
1
a decrepit mess / pit
put them away
a cat, a dog, an auto executioner
gone, finally, by dawn
desperate houses plunked down in rock face
where will everyone live?
2
Warren Farm’s disastrous pick-your-own corn experiment
DeMerritt Hill Farm now owned by New York City refugees
who need to make the mortgage
while I’ve planted
blueberries, raspberries, asparagus, pussy willow,
rosa rugosa
the laurel and rhododendron that didn’t survive
all mine, all the same, within some inexplicable current
3
gentleness versus meanness
anger (I’m angry all the time)
RITUAL
versus
SURPRISE
Wild Willy’s still closed on Sundays
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Copyright 2015
BUT THAT’S NOT EVERYTHING
in the median strip of Route 17 just north of Pennsylvania
Paula and I found a road map of Fayette County, Tennessee
“you wanna talk about getting lost?”
all these vehicles entering a busy traffic circle
are just a matter of shuffling cars . as the matron confided,
“Harry and I used to go down to Buffalo” to do this or do that
careening along curving roads, I saw the moon
swallowed and released over mountains . “she’s
a nice girl who does well in school, but that’s not everything”
or we could have just stopped at a
BAR DINING ROOM
flashing in orange and green neon
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Copyright 2015
REGARDING ROOMMATES AND NEIGHBORS
a black kid
as I was carrying out stuff
“you moving?”
“yeah, to a farm.”
“oh . hey, is your sister moving too?”
yeah, to the city
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Copyright 2015
A LOVE OF WORDS, INDEED
Susquehanna remains one of my favorite words in the language. (And to think, it’s an import, from the New World.) I love the way the syllables dance around in the mouth and roll off the tongue.
So what is your favorite word?
~*~
For more of my exploration of the word in its world, click here.
AFTERNOON AT OUR THIRD-FLOOR APARTMENT WINDOW
white body
with black wingtips
on white sky
a gull flitted past
the third-floor apartment window
on an overcast day
the next afternoon
panes sliced sunlight
onto a bubbling aquarium
that opened as butterfly wings
on the opposite wall
still, she was a question mark
who made him a question mark
in return
my Indiana, so faraway then
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Copyright 2015
DOWNHILL FROM THE HEART
Beethoven’s chamber pot beside the piano
revealed a man truly engrossed in his work
when there was nothing else to touch.
Not even another Zelda Fitzgerald, seeking
a Daddy-Daddy-Daddy who
never was what she’s expected
nor was I.
It was all downhill
from the heart.
She rather melted away, like the music,
at the end of the page,
while I expected another.
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Copyright 2015
REGARDING THE GATE HOUSE AT BLODGETT’S CANAL AND LOCKS
Thoreau turned upstream on the Merrimack
rather than to the ocean
before heading back
~*~
needles and rotting leaves
the floor of the stream steep
water the color of tea
it’s a dangerous
river that was home
shores denuded
when tall pines older than the railroad
were felled to make way
for fiber optic cable
they say you log on
in its branching current
owls and herons take him away
above the hydroelectric turbines
~*~
landing adventurously
perhaps to shout
I remember where you are
the cuisine isn’t that much different
than our second city together
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Copyright 2015
WITH FINGERS AS THICK AS HOT DOGS
Resting on the park bench, she complained
she couldn’t keep pace with her children.
When the seven-year-old pest returned,
demanding, “Ma, give me money”
for a cola, she complied,
thinking it love.
~*~
She couldn’t touch her toes.
~*~
Her legs pushed away from each other, yet
in her cotton dress, unexpectedly
as she swatted a fly, she began to float
and meticulously shrank from sight,
bouncing along the horizon.
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Copyright 2015
Jnana's Red Barn 