Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published by Earth's Daughters in 1986, and by Fine China: Twenty Years of Earth's Daughters in 1993

1949 Pontiac

black and sleek.

My father rounds

his gleaming fastback

sparkle of chrome,

my mother already

tucked inside,

the vault-like

slam of the door 

still music

to his ears,

solid as a limo,

this dreamy Joe 

Dimaggio about 

to cruise away

with Marilyn.

Tuesday Poem: Previously published in Footwork in 1987

Barn Fire

vomits flames and smoke into yellow day,

about a mile ahead down the Thruway,

leaves us breathless in the car,

searching through the trees

for a glimpse of the fire’s

hot mouth, as we draw near,

barn skeleton like a

child's drawing in black crayon

vibrating over a floor of solid flame,

walls gone; everything going to charcoal.

I think about hay –

how sweet it is, fresh from the fields,

how it chafes and generates

heat when it’s shut away,

sparks and goes asmolder in the dark.

I was sixteen when my father begged

Uncle Dick to put him in the hospital.

He was terrified, he told me,

that he’d kill himself.

Our mother and he were separated

a couple of years already,

but she drove the two hours it took

to get us up there, soon after he called.

The plastic bracelet hung on his wrist

as he asked me for a light, as we

sat in Rockland State Hospital’s ]
dayroom, a poisonous fog around us, as he

chain-smoked Pall Malls, letting them 
burn down to little cylinders of ash.

He coughed as he talked, a fire 
slowly rising in my chest as he ranted.

Did we know they took the mattresses

off the beds, forced him to pace

back and forth down the hall,

like a moving target?

His hands were shaking, his long 
tobacco fingers pinching the cigarettes 
flat, as his voice cut the air, my throat 
going so raw, I could barely swallow.

Did we know they were starving him?

His supper last night was a 
slice of bologna, and a handful of dry 
spaghetti, with a packet of ketchup.

He cried so hard at the thought of it, 
he couldn’t even choke it down.

We’d bought him another carton of Pall Malls, 
a Life Magazine, a Look. The blister around 
my heart was getting bigger; I could hardly breathe.

It’s only temporary, Tom, try to 
hold on, my mother said. Then she 
told us to say goodbye to him, it was 
time to get going. He asked us for hugs.

I remember my hands beating the air 
around his shoulders, like homeless swallows.

The closest I could come to any comfort.

Tuesday Poem: From The Grove In The Eye Of Light

Magnolia

The one and only time

we went to the park with Daddy,

I swung so high and long

it made me sick, and I had to

lie down on a bench to

make the world stop tilting

this way and that.

When I looked at them

sideways, the swings

heaved in and out,

like too many shallow breaths,

and Tommy became a blur,

a dream on the merry go round,

its silver handles pushed and pushed

by the big kids, until dark forces

snatched backwards so hard he had to let go,

flying, his legs and arms splayed,

landing hard, with a splat, in a

mud puddle big as a watering hole,

where he sat in shock all soaked

and mucky from head to toe.

When Daddy saw him,  he sauntered over,

told him to get up, we were leaving,

made us wade across the grass,

ankle deep through bruised pink

blossoms, all the way to the parking lot,

where Tommy had to stand still

while Daddy stripped him down

to his underwear, throwing

his wet clothes in the trunk,

to keep him from ruining

the Pontiac’s upholstry.

How hard he cried then,

leaning into my arms,

until he fell asleep,

on the long ride home,

the two of us lost

in the back seat’s

velvet gloom, 

and Daddy’s

silence.