Tuesday Poem: previously published by Caprice in 1996

 Genesis (The Real Story)

In the beginning there was violence.

The two of them struggling for dominance.

His rage a black hole

sucking the two of them

out of time and back again,

Her defiance lacerating Him:

the sharp edges of a nebula skirting too close.

It takes two to tango,

my mother always said,

and it came from her knowledge of this:

The First Tango,

when the tension between Them

caused what scientists call 'The Big Bang';

what actually was the first and last separation.

She shook Him, you see.

Wake up you son of nothing!

So He tackled Her,

just to restrain Her, mind you,

but then She maneuvered 

and bit His celestial finger.

Suddenly, it was Wham!

A huge fist square to Her chest.

How dare you hit me in the breast!

You stinking Red Giant!

You White Dwarf!

She flung planets in His face

so He pushed Her hard until 

She thudded against this one,

knocking the wind out of her 

and all the fire too.

That's when She wept for emptiness,

the wounding of the two of them

stretched thin across eternity's indifference.

 She wept for loneliness, for having no one else,

and as She wept She tore at the planet's sides,

until there were great holes to fill with tears.

She wept for thousands of years.

You know the rest.

When the place came alive Her mood changed.

She began to try to find a way to love again,

for the two of them, some tangible alternative.

She kept messing around with water and dust, 

remaking Herself over and over in miniature,

until She got it right. And then She made Him 

as She wished Him to be, over and over 

until She got it right. She made their bodies 

fit together. She made them willing

to reach across the night.

She gave them more to work with, 

you might say, flawed though they were.

Let there be a light spawned out of darkness,

She said. And She saw that the light was good.

It was the outcome of a fight,

the end of a cosmic honeymoon,
a bubble that suddenly burst: Blake's 
mystical spheres torn apart.

Of course His story is altogether different.

He dreamed Himself moving 

over the face of the waters,

Gardener of the Firmament,

benign, and of course, betrayed

by the slither of woman's 

dissatisfaction, her hunger 

to know it all.

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: Previously published in The Passaic County Community College Anthology in 1992

We Learn About Love 

from the stories our parents 
tell at the supper table,

like sober news commentators,
creating history, they always begin 
with an axiom: It doesn’t pay 
to be grabby, they say.  
Take Minnie around the corner.

Minnie ran the local grocery for her parents.

She was what we all called homely:

short and brown and thick as a little fireplug.

But Minnie had a beautiful husband,

her father had imported for her from Italy.

And she glowed when she had to talk for him

to the rest of us, which she did 
because he didn't speak English.

Day after day he went off to 
who knows what job or where,

with his black wavy hair, 
white teeth, and permanent tan.

But, let’s face it: what he 
said and did wasn't important.

What was, was that he was Minnie's, 
and that the women

said three Hail Mary’s 
whenever he passed them.

Until one summer this angel 
went up on the roof to fix it,

and in a grab at a sliding hammer 
plunged to the sidewalk 
and broke his neck.

Just like that! My mother 
snapped her fingers,

her whole life gone in a heartbeat!

Minnie must have been shattered,

but two days after the funeral 
she was back, shuffling around 
the store in her mules and peds,

using the claw to grab the heavy 
cans off the shelves, dropping them 
down and catching them in one hand,

like she’d always done. But it 
wasn’t the same. It used to be fun 
to go in there, to watch her dance

with the mop, or sing to 
the baskets of fava beans.

Now the store seemed more
like Pompeii,  what with 
Minnie buried alive 

every night in its ashes.

It's a shame, my mother sighed, 
as she got up to clear the table.

You go after too much, and you’re 
in for nothing but heartache.

Yeah, my father said, as he lit a cigarette,  
it doesn’t pay to kid yourself.

My brother and I swallowed, eyeing each

other through a growing cloud of smoke.