Tuesday Poem: previously published by Salt Hill Journal in 1990 and Caprice in 1992

Cow Crossing

Each one is a black and white newsreel,

an ache of bones undulating,

a moan against gravity.

Big as cars, they

lurch across the road,

rumble and bellow, eyes bulging

at the boy who shoos them barnward,

as chased and clucked toward milking

they go, placing one dainty hoof

in front of another, careful as two

tightrope walkers, encased in a cow suit,

afraid of falling.

All go except the one

who turns her dark face away from the rest,

flicks her tail at the boy,

at his calls and whistles,

as if he were just a big fly.

She wants to stay lost

in the apples and timothy of the pasture forever.

She twitches and shoulders the air,

sweeping away the stone walls,

the stanchions and hungry machines,

with her slow head.

The stuff in her velvet bag

will clot and curdle

if he doesn't coax her out soon.

What can she do?

Caught, she lows to him softly.

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.