You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
In the congregation of pleasure:
Some are fat; some, skinny.
Some cute; a few, beautiful.
They smile, frown, dimple, blink.
Hair short, curled, long and free.
They come from anywhere.
~*~
“Roger was in my room again till five
telling me he didn’t want to sleep alone again,”
she said, glancing at her lover
while he simply smiled, facing away.
~*~
One votive burns
twice as fast
as the other.
Both, invoking
departed honeybees.
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
She liked to bite fingers.
She braided my beard.
Her nose and big toe were square.
Her tresses were thirteen years long.
~*~
She devoured the translation like a cheeseburger
and refused to understand me.
She spent her paycheck
on clothes she bought on layaway
while she was one unemployed
good dresser who had to do something.
She said Kayak poetry review
looked like a Sunday school booklet
with a cannon on the cover.
~*~
She didn’t like the antique silver fork
with the engraved W
I’d bought for a dime
– the yellowed marriage
whose bride was no doubt long dead
held no treasure in her eyes.
Why else would we have it?
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Copyright 2015
“Those aren’t bulls, they’re steers”
she corrected from the passenger seat.
Now a waitress at the country club.
“I bet you get some pretty far-out passes.”
“More than that!” She giggled.
Here she was living with a man
in a hotel in town. He was a Mohawk
who raised horses and died
two days after landing a paying job.
“I guess I’ll never go back”
– to the farm, to the city –
it didn’t matter.
~*~
Sometimes it’s the Baptist upbringing.
~*~
She couldn’t understand why her parents
were still together. Thought her mother
once had a lover. She’d hear kissing
after being sent to bed, after her father’s
best friend had come over. Now
he couldn’t stand him.
There was a big waterfall on their farm
which they had to sell.
And she told me
she had laryngitis the previous week,
making me wonder
if I should have kissed her good-night
so much.
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Copyright 2015
She washed dishes so fast they’re still dirty.
Even then, she overlooked
the beauty of tarnished silver.
Adding cabbage to the garbage,
she insisted Kosher pickles are obscene
and cheap wine’s just funky venom.
When she visited my kitchen
she wanted to star in a detergent commercial.
All of it meaning we ate out often.
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Copyright 2015
once more, flipping a month, a year
another mountain, loon, lighthouse, tulip
markers of days and flowing
history or future encoded
as numerals, this imprecise bank ledger
with moon phases
occasionally with a comfort of knowing I’ve been there
or desire to go
or recollection of encountering what’s pictured
as for next month or next year
no matter how carefree
the intended journey or dreaming
some map or guiding is essential
unless we’re simply floating
and who knows, then
still, the clearest water remains a mask
moving, breathing
more than land
with the preponderance of life
on land, atop
in water, below
while the intertidal zones
open to interpretation
each tide
a page that turns back on itself
enigmas
a reminder of holy spaces
we enter rarely, if ever
point behind point
without end
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of seacoast poems, click here.
Steel rings in a stone wall
remained to tie up horses
back when.
Just in case.
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Copyright 2015
“Jim’s one of our young flashes,”
a production chief told his wife
when all three paths crossed in the grocery.
To which, you might add, “in the pan.”
~*~
“I wish I could have gone to college.
I wanted to be an engineer.”
said the unshaved man in a Salvation Army pullover.
There are a lot of older people in college classes,
his nephew tried coaxing.
“I have no money,” came closing in like a curtain.
~*~
An elderly mother and middle-aged daughter
argument escalated in the sedan
in the doughnut shop parking lot.
They’d no doubt discussed this before.
At last, opening her door, the daughter repeated:
“Let’s go in and drop the subject.”
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Copyright 2015
We were gathering her possessions
for our return to school when I came across
Hollander’s recording of The Tempest.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked curiously,
looking up to see her disappointed face
and be told: “It was for your birthday.”
Years later, another lover
would filch the album
amid another tempest.
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Poem copyright 2015
Attraction includes conflict. Passion. Suffering. Adjustment. Breakthroughs. Surrender, even.
A tender touch. Renewal. A dance, together. Our song, in the end.
For the full set of poems, click here.
~*~
I used to like the Public Broadcasting System series, back before I bought an old house. Now it’s too painful. Look at all this old wiring, the plumbing problems, the rot and warping, the fact the bulkhead needs replacing. The flaking paint, again. (Bulkhead? Didn’t even know what that was beforehand.)
What else do you want to know about New England?
~*~
For more on my poetry collection and others, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 