Tuesday Poem: Previously published in Claiming The Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women's Poetry, ed. Marilyn Sewell, Beacon Press 1994

 
Painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage 1879

Jeanne d' Arc

The best thing

was when the voices told

her to dress like a boy,

and stepping out of

the homespun skirts, her long

hair in heaps on the floor,

she put on the armor and knew

it would protect her

from rough hands,

from then on becoming her

skin : silvery scales

hardened over her tenderest

places, and she would never have to

be tender again,

not even when the fire,

trying to consume her, curled

every cell black, sent them flying

up through the air, so many

butterflies she watched

circle away and come back

to enclose her again.

So be it, she said,

for eternity encrusted in angels

darkly whispering: Yes.

Tuesday Poem: Previously published in lingerings (online) in 1999

Hog Barn at the State Fair         

  

The next pig out of the chute

is mottled black over pink,

delicately etched, so it looks

like she’s wearing lace.

And she’s running as fast as she can

around the ring, trying to get away

from the man who wants to show her,

so he hits her harder and harder,

with the stick he's supposed to be using

to guide her toward the judges

who want to take a really good look

at the fruits of his husbandry.

Watch her shoot like a bullet on pointy legs,

wounding the audience, and the man too,

now red-faced, huffing after her, his stick

landing hard on her back. The crack of it

like thunder, making us cringe.

I want to squeal when he hits her.

But then someone nearby, whose favorite

food, like my father’s, is big thick pork chops,

might blow his stack. After all she has

too much mind of her own, that pig,
she lacks discipline -- she didn't turn 
when he tapped her gently, did she? 
No, she went the opposite way,

perverse little twit. She asked for it

by slobbering on his pants leg.

Sweet Jesus, when she’s back in the pen,

the applause is a cloudburst that tries to

wash everything clean. Give that man

a ribbon! Make it black and blue!

Quick as the wind, get the next pair

out and running around the ring!

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.

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: Previously published by Calyx in 1987

Painting by Francien Krieg

 

Linda

As I passed the door of her room,

I had to rub my eyes.

Her pink nipples and pale 
rise of china breasts

looked new as a young girl's

beneath the wrinkles of her face.

Old age rustled like wind on sand

in the Swancott Home for Ladies,
and she reclined oblivious,

an odalisque on a narrow bed

in coral and porcelain autumn light.

A gift of late blooming roses,

ashimmer over shifting dunes.

A mirage? No, an oasis in this 
barren, stoop-shouldered place.

Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published in Footwork 1987

My Mother Always Seemed Bigger Than Me

her face as round as a Russian Doll’s.

She even wore a babushka when it rained.

And her mother bigger still, enveloping her

in the do’s and don’ts of the world,

all the frowning dimpled faces and stocky bodies,

with wagging stubby fingers: No, no, no.

And my grandmother’s mother before her,

wearing cabbage and bacon grease perfume.

All the way back to Holland they go,

All of them closing over me, each 

generation more massive than the last.

All of them cast from a similar mold,

their arms painted on, akimbo over aprons,

faces barely holding in the rage they feel,

about working, working, always working

for children who don't appreciate.

O lineage of matriarchs, who tucked
your sheets too tight, I see you floating 

above me as my shadow comes down,

round as a bell jar,  grim as the final 
hour of night over my daughters, 

passing on that darkness, 
whether I want to or not.

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.

Tuesday Poem: from The Grove In The Eye Of Light

Scrub Pine

He seemed to need so little,

his spare frame bent

on learning to play guitar,

my middle brother,

weathered and

sturdy as a pilot boat

lost in the salt mist of music.

Years I watched him,

cheered for him, trying to green

and grow while a hurricane

raged between our parents,

until he shut himself away

from all of us, taking the knob

off the door to his room,

replying to our entreaties

with bouts of silence.

Now his solos take me back

to when he was eight months old,

sitting in the high chair I carried out

to the back of the garden,

and kicking his little square feet,

as I fed him peaches,

cool and sweet,

the sky as blue

and cloudless as his eyes.

Tuesday Poem: First published in Outerbridge in 1987

                   Illustration by Frederic Dorr Steele

When The Junk Man Came Down Summer Street

We stood on the sidewalk 

across from the corner drugstore,

eyeing our own reflections in the green glass doors

behind which Doc’s Great Dane slept 

every night to scare away burglars.

We stretched and pranced 

impatient as runners, waiting for the junk man 

and his wagon to roll like a ghostly wave

across Doc’s little harbor of marble and glass,

the knobs on the soda fountain 

bobbing like white marker buoys.

We followed him down the block then:

past old D’Allessandro squinting 

through Coke bottle glasses

his white hair stiff as the brushes 

that hung from the sides of the wagon,

past Rose Quatrocchi with her 

sons in their shiny red stroller,

past Ralph Molinaro 

who kept pigeons and rabbits,

his backyard bristling with edible blossoms,

past the girls playing hopscotch 

with a hard rubber heel, begged from 

the shoemaker who never seemed busy,

who my father said was a Mafia bookie,

their game interrupted, the girls ran behind us.

The junk on the wagon   

tilted and swayed like the graceful trombones 

and French horns the old men played as they 
marched for the feast of Santa Croce Camarina.

His cowbells were strung 

like stars across our daylight.

They clanked and tinkled 

and floated a rhythm that made us 

want to start skipping.

There was Santa and Rosa

whose  mother could never 

remember their names

and called them Hey You in Italian,

Columbia who couldn’t come out 

unless Baby Jerry came with her,

Tanya and Sonia, and Hanna their sister,

their mother on the porch 

in her flowered babushka.

Then Georgie Capello 

and blonde-headed Victor,

and Sammy the Mongol 

who swore like a trooper.

Even crazy Joe, in his black leather jacket,

stopped combing his hair and came out

to call to the chestnut junk wagon  horse

who seldom looked up 

at the sound of our voices,

his hooves rocking slow 

on the hard black macadam,

inching his way to the corner on rickety legs.

Past the brick stoop where 

Gracie’s Communist tenant

sat by himself every night like a mummy,

past Father Andresani’s cranky old mama

her gray head nodding in time to the rosary,

down to Louie’s where we 

bought Daddy's cigarettes,

and lemon ice with the leftover money.

Louie made it himself 

in a big silver bowl 

at the back of the store

and he told us he made it 

with snow shipped from Italy.

Then the junk man waved 

as he got to the corner,

taking his jingle and clip-clop 

toward 21st Ave. His hat sat so straight 

on his head in the gold and the shadows,

it sent sparks up our spines 

as we stopped at the corner 

to wave him goodbye,

made us suddenly jump Double Dutch

or play Tag in a wild stampede over fences,

and through the network of yards 

and alleyways behind our houses.

On those days we were never glad 

to be called in to supper.

The rust and the clutter, 

the feathers, the moving machine parts,

the slack leather reins in the junkman’s

powerful big knuckled hands,

the spots on the horse’s back 

where the hair had rubbed off,

the plod and the footfall 

lingered in our heads, so we 

laughed out loud in our beds 

before falling asleep.

There was so little junk in our lives.

Tuesday Poem: Published in Kalliope in 1986

photo by Rick Ruggles
 (color adjusted)

  

Let's Invite Autumn

into bed with us,

our legs rustling the sheets,

like wind sighs through fallen leaves,

a hint of dryness in the murmuring

that passes between us,

our mouths cool,

insistent as morning,

on the edge of desperation.

Let's start school tonight,

open each other like brand new books,

tangle ourselves in curiosity,

take a recess from innocence.

I'll show you my September apples.

We can press cider together,

drink to the gathering darkness.

Dance with me -- a last fandango

as we go ablaze, as we come

down to sweet sleep,

bright sails along the golden,

rim of sunset, the giddy

contours of what’s

about to pass away.