Tuesday Poem: previously published in Poetpourri in 1992

The Hunger Angels

first came to her when they were fighting.

Their whispers made her feel 

like she’d put her ear to a seashell.

They told her her father swallowed his anger.

They danced like little fireflies around him,

swirled inside his undertow of loneliness,

swam in his beer, made fun of the white heron

poses, he learned as a boy, in a kitchen

where there was never enough to eat.

She watched them hover like hummingbirds

as they buzzed her mother's fork,

oozed out of her sandwiches, as she took her 

giant bites. When Mommy sat quiet, they gathered 

in her hair, stirring up the racket of memory,

with its abuses, desertions, hard work that made her

disappear into cooking pots, and gourmet magazines.

The little girl watched the two of them

tangle with one another in despair.

The angels multiplied then, their faces

becoming her parents' faces in miniature.

Put us in your hope chest, they said

when she was eight years old.

Someday you'll open it,

and we'll have grown like dumplings,

or steamy loaves of bread.

No head of a pin for us, babe.

We’ll keep you fidgety company.

Just  fire up those cravings.

In her innocence she welcomed them,

glad to be included, not knowing

how else the story might have gone.

Tuesday Poem: Published in The Passaic County Community College Anthology in 1989

Black Dress Poem

  Isn't it a bitter thing to think of him floating that way...

  and no one to keen him but the black hags that do be flying

  on the sea.                         

                                                J. M. Synge

                                               Riders To The Sea

Daddy, I used to smell your T-shirts

lying so white in the drawer,

as I put the laundry away,

long thoughtful breaths,

leafing nervously

through the old photographs,

you kept hidden under the socks,

looking for clues.

It was my secret ritual,

leaning against the foot board

of the pineapple-poster marriage bed

that had always been too small for you.

Pictures of you as a young Marine

in bar after bar surrounded by friends,

their faces so many smiling moons

held close by your gravity, some Rita

Hayworth woman on your arm.

The eight by ten

Mommy talked about

through gritted teeth:

Lola with the long red nails

who was crazy for you

but wouldn't have suited the family.

My father the Admiral's Orderly,

with a mustache and a forty five,

dressed in your battle tuxedo:

an open pack of Camels

your boutonniere.

It would have been impossible then

to imagine that you stood

on the rim of a bottomless well

that would eventually swallow you,

or that your children would have to turn

their backs on you to save themselves.

Daddy, all the years you kept from sinking,

by pouring a sea of beer down your throat,

I searched for you everywhere,

despite the shadows. I want to tell you,

I saw you, I saw you, even though

a curtain hung between us:
too heavy for me to lift.