Tuesday Poem: Published by Caprice in 1992

At Woolworth's Lunch Counter

a man sits watching the waitresses work,

his cigarette smoke spelling out

retired and regular over his head.

Every once in awhile he lifts some 
apple pie to his mouth in slow motion, 
and regular changes to rapture.

You know he comes here often. You watch him

smile and nod to the sweet faced waitress,

wide as two people, who carries her breasts

like twin babies, swaddled tight in the navy

blue uniform, and so tenderly, as she

waddles past him with empty plates.

His smoke draws a heart in the air, and you agree.

Clearly she’s the pulse beat here,

the cook, dishwasher, girl who covers two stations

so the rest of them can go on their breaks.

You see a heavy woman with sore feet,

inching along behind the counter,

as if she were walking on hot coals,

trying her best to draw energy from the pain,

and unaware that she’s being watched

by this man in need of ritual,

this man with too much time on his hands,

this man without much reason to sacrifice.

So he comes here, to sit at this altar,

his gaze fierce and warm as a votive light,

burning for his Madonna of Tuna Melts.

You can almost touch his reverence,

circumscribed as it is in soft white smoke.

It lights up the empty glasses; 
it glazes the doughnuts.

The hot dogs glisten 
as they turn in their silver beds.

Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published by Caprice in 1996

When My Mother Finally Met Frankie
for Donna
It was late in his career
so she didn't swoon
like the bobby-soxer
she used to be,

she started singing
Mack The Knife
to him instead,

I don't know why.
It never worked
when she tried it with my father.

She must have been thinking
about Frankie's swagger just then,
how he transformed himself
from a skinny Hoboken kid
into a giant, a shark in a white shirt.

She'd watched him grow 
bigger when he sang,
become a dreamboat,
an ark you could board,
and be rescued in,
from the wrath of God.

She probably wanted him 
to know he had inspired her
that come Hell or high 
water, she was a fighter.

Forget the Dean Martin
husband, the rat pack
bunch of ungrateful kids,
the years of working
night shifts, bouts of
spending like a sailor.

For what?
Once you go under the knife,
once you shed scarlet billows,
it all drops away. Tumor schmoomer.
She, like Macky, was back in town.

But Old Blue Eyes didn't get it.
He smiled, and turned to his bodyguards,
said through his pearly whites:
Get this crazy broad out of my way.