Tuesday Poem: previously published by The Paterson Literary Review in 2005

Aunt Aggie Closes Her Eyes

and her soul slips away

like a bolt of dotted Swiss on the breeze

flying higher and higher

toward a Magellanic Cloud.

Good-bye, I say.

Hope you don’t mind

that I conjured up such flimsy stuff.

It’s just that you were gossamer

compared to our workman’s

poplin and kitchen oilcloth.

I see her circling the moon with my father,

Aunt Mary trailing behind them, and Uncle Joe.

She offers a wispy hand to my mother,

pours some tea and sympathy

like she always did,

then whirls, a dizzy mist

toward the grim

outline of her parents,

the thin familiar

arms of Uncle Allen.

 I wave. Thanks, I shout,

especially for your knock-knock jokes,

and for not taking sides when things fell apart.

For serving us your too small Sunday roasts,

so we had to stop for burgers

on the way home, my parents joking

and laughing instead of fighting.

You never added salt to anything.

You gave me my first Pop Tart,

and taught me how to face death

with a heart so full of love

there’s no room left for fear.

I’ll  always remember.

She giggles and shakes her head,

then flies off to ride the Milky Way,

glad to be as passé as Christmas tinsel.

Thus the heavy basket

I’ve carried all my life

becomes a little bit lighter.

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.