SHADOW DANCE

show

my silhouette on shade
in syncopated undulated rhythm call

my name in song carry
my child in circles erode

a path of worn holes trod
in carpet converse

in silent screams whisper
the love that some time was take

my hand waltz
me through a dirty kitchen offer

my glass slipper to a whore hire
a coach to drive my spirit send

me to the ball alone seek
my fortune as long as we never leave

my home

Back to Top

PARKS 2-16-95

Crisp black uniforms gather braced
against rain and wind,
bundled bouquets of blood
red roses cradled to those solid
breasts. Eight years-the structure's
rebuilt strong-smooth bronze
reminder silently draped in weather
down the years. One rose
remained. How many lives
remember?

I pause. I turn. You sit, unseen by all
save me. Strong finger traces petal edges
touching moisture-a drop of rain
or tears? Your colleagues spoke of heroism,
pain. They officially remember. Your wife,
your children miss you every day. And
I do know how many lives
remember.

Back to Top

LINGERIE

She sits sad near her princess phone
forlorn,
clothed in Caroline's ivory silk camisole and
tap pants, dressed

to impress none but his voice. She waits
trembling--caress the rose, calm the fear. Idle fingers
smooth the folds of yellowed
peau de soie so carefully

hand beaded
with seed
pearls clinging to the lace like raindrops on a spider's
web, draping the dressmaker's mannequin, those

bloodstains barely noticed now, a pale
pink patina reflecting
some poignant maidenhood. She glances at those
faded photographs framed in silver

tarnish; Caroline at twenty-nine arrayed in
a much whiter gown, face buried in her hands, rose petals
strewn beneath her feet in a tangle of thorny stems
and ribbons.

And so, she
waits, her shopping
trip through attic trunks forgotten. Her joy
at his sweetly whispered words

a hazy fragment. She sees him as he was
last night, standing naked
in Masai warrior glory, rain mingled with the sweat
of sex and sorrow, mud and

flowing river swirling around
nut brown hips. He clutched her milky
whiteness close and cold
his Caroline

in crinoline petticoats. Denied.

Back to Top

SECRETS

When I was nine you died and no one told
me. You were my sister but we never kissed
or shared our clothes. Did you have downy
hair like me, Tommy and Michelle

or were you bald and blonde like all
the rest? I never saw. The brief two
days you lived, grabbing at each painful
breath, our mother must have touched

your cheek as she did mine when I was small
and even now. You knew the best of her-soft
touches, warmth, no arguments
or stab of cutting words from either

side. We've mended now with age, mother
and I, but still we never speak
of your life or your death. We talk
around it. That's how we are. My sister,

her daughter, my daughter nine years
later. Long ago in the ice age of adolescence I told
no one, named her Mary after you. It was easier,
that way, to mourn when she was

gone. I touched her cheek, said my good-byes,
and handed her to strangers. When I
was twenty-nine my Nana died and no one
told me for a week. That's how we are.

Back to Top

RHAPSODY IN A BLUE BATHROOM

Picasso's Blue Nude hangs above the toilet
her curving female shape reclined

in sadness touching depths
of monochrome held counterpoint

to cold smooth lines of porcelain
she could have hung in a living space

juxtaposed with photographs of sunsets
water tides those fluid things

she's always been a bathroom woman
searching for towels to match

her dabbled hue choosing the pink
her shade when sorrow fell.

Back to Top

WITH ROSIE AT PAROCHIAL SCHOOL

Throw whiskey bottles at the moon
and never have to run from men
or weather. We chatter brainless
about bears, birds, and wizards while
odors of lost time fill attic air.

Two instants at one time, separate
and unified, we are shadow girls unseen
crawling between the pillars
of the Parthenon to kiss the feet
of Aphrodite when she touches

our red lips with her complicated
hand. Not yet ruined, an apparency
in process, where does our plumage
go? Crossing like a column of ants
into the custody of two nuns, we

rattle around in marble temples
the size of public baths. The evil
autonomy of my hand wakes you
up in the weeds outside of Pittsburgh
with a left hand's suicidal impulse,

astonishing your shade in a morning
hunt for pacifying stones. I wear my shyness
like a cloak of velvet-you aim at me
to make yourself a heroine-while hippos
wearing lockets sing Nirvana in the dark.

Passing whiskey bottles, we unleash
our tongues-those critical, comical eccentrics-
telling tales out of school to the moon
with innocence of laughter as our uniforms
drift slowly on the wind.

Back to Top

WADING

Standing in the river flow
Neptune listens to the rustle
of reeds along the bank. Standing
mortal feet turn to ice. We pass
dark nights between the sunfilled
days. Soft water ripples
over rocks. Water is a clear pale
freeze over my ankles. Silk
nightgown over wet skin.

Back to Top

FOR ROXANNE

I

I walk down Grand Avenue past
an unnatural garden of cut
carnations, freesia, and baby's
breath laid on bare earth. Poems
and letters streaked with rain like
tears for a child too young
to die. Children leave her crayon
drawings, toys and teddy bears as they
cling to mother's hand and stare into
blackberry vines, knowing that the stranger
wasn't strange. He plucked
her from the fine loam of her family
to discard her used and lifeless
for among grass clippings,
brambles, and spring's ever-present
dandelion bloom.

II

It's not there now. This tiny girlish
body rests in a box of white
and silver, buried on Holy Saturday
so she will rise on Easter, but she won't.
She never will again. We scream at God
when life becomes unfair, but
God is not at fault here, only men.
A man who stole the child, stole
her childhood, stole her life. A man
who could have protected, prevented,
but drank instead giving up his
watch for pleasure, once again. He cries
now, but we cannot hear his tears.

Back to Top

ALICE AT THE OCEAN

Falling
down holes meant for rabbits
foolish girls and geoducks
tricycles rust on sandy sidewalks
highway of sawgrass and
broken concrete chains

a child attached to teddy bear
in a grave beneath moth-eaten
blankets
drank a potion proffered by a
worm once proud she now
hawks mushrooms on the beach

ocean visit July 1956 asks the faded label
inside three broken shells twenty-four beloved rocks
a photograph of fireworks orgasmic
magic numbers
Alice eats five starfish fingers
her present is no past

Back to Top

MILK AND FATAL MEMORIES

I walked into the Mini-Mart and stopped
when I saw Irish Red (could be
the beer or whiskey or maybe

it was the color of my hair), but
anyway, I'd come to get the milk
and slid with purpose down the aisle. All

the while Irish Red's eyes were
on me not the sack of Wonder
Bread he strangled rhythmically in his giant

workman hands. They said
Irish Red had been dropped
on his head when he was young, but

I never saw the dents
or anything, and besides, Mama said
to get the milk and hurry home. And when

Mama said, Mama said. So I did.
I brought one hefty gallon of two percent
to the register and heaved it up

with two crumpled dirty food coupons
and got one penny change. I turned and
he was there behind me, his Wonder Bread

and Jif grasped in one hand, touching
my curls with the other and looking
at my bare legs with the thirst of a desert

dwelling man. I ran fast, past the field
where Mrs. Peterson's cow
grazed on dry brown stubble and

the stand of forty trees we called
the woods, in the back door,
breathing hard, and stopped

cold when Mama said, "Look
who came for lunch?" I forgot
to spend the penny in the gum machine.

Back to Top