All Purpose Crime Fighting Wonder Dog !

I was holding her toy; thus the rapt expression!

C'mere, Sugah

C'mere, sugah.
Oh come
_
_
_
HERE,
woudja, sweetheart?

Aw, don't be like that.
Aintcha glad t'see me?

All right.
I'll just bide my time.
Sooo,
is that a good book?
Well,
ya didn't have to close it,
but I guess there's a fire or something outside that window.
Yep, something wonderful in-ter-esting.

~whistle~
~sigh~
...
...
...
Well hello there, baby.
kiss~
and
~kiss.
I sure love you a bunch too.
Feels like I ain't seen ya in donkey's years.
I said "years", not "ears."
No, I ain't saying nothing about your mama.
I like ole Jenny just fine,
you know I do!
She made you, didn't she?
(yeah, I know that's pretty cornball,
but true.)

C'mon, then.
Let's go paint the town!
_
_
_
Um, you ain't gonna get there very fast
sitting down.
Now what?
I seen tree stumps less firmly planted.
Take it easy,
I was just yanking your rope,
but how come if I say A,
you just GOT to say Z?

All the same,
I love ya so.
You'll always be my hinny honey,
and yes,
I love your singing.
You shoulda been in some sort of horse opera--
you woulda done your daddy proud.
Now can we go?
Kick up a little dust?

I love it when you walk right close.
Aw sugah.
Aw shucks.
______

for Marian's Time (the Revelator) challenge at Real Toads. I used a different Gillian Welch song, "Hard Times."

Fun facts to know and tell: a female donkey is a "jenny". When bred with a male horse, you get a "hinny".

  

 

Book Review: "The Fragile World"

The Fragile World by Paula Treick DeBoard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the story of the Kaufman family, Curtis and Kathleen, their musical prodigy son Daniel, and his younger sister Olivia. When Daniel, away at college, is killed by a careless driver while walking home from a pizza parlor, things begin to unravel for the rest of the family. The point of view alternates between Curtis and Olivia. Normally, I'm not a fan of shifting point of view, but here it was the only way to tell the story because the characters keep secrets from each other, but the reader needs to know.

I found this novel highly readable, and I cared about all of the characters. The ending threw me a little bit, or at least, a detail about the ending did. Definitely a good read and an author I would gladly read again. 



View all my reviews

Crop Duster

She fell out of the crop dusting plane--
chemicals may, in fact, have had something to do with it.
She was certainly high.
She may have been lit.

She threw herself, a bouquet, at the world.
Here comes a blossom,
a real live flesh and blood
girl.

There were no stairs.
Had there been, she could have done her best deb walk,
descending photogenically
from blue
to bloom
and from sky
to stalk.

Okay, so it was me, on my way down from wing-walking of an afternoon.
I thought I saw you below me, among the vines,
eating a tomato and reading Whitman.
It could have been you.
It could have been chemistry
or kismet
or my eyes playing tricks.

Anyway, every time I breathe,
my blood turns from moody jay to calling cardinal.
That is why I had to come and kiss you, honey,
even if I had to fall.
_______

Requiem For A Cassowary

Here is the man, your hero, shot
into space by sign of what man can do;
what ass can question, what ass has got
more than an astronaut's glory? You?

Halo'd on podium with his lessers, the crew,
he's God's own bratty favorite.
Shine and stardust? He's made of it.

The Moon and Mars fall back a pace
in the face of science's full command,
to probe, to pierce, and then retrace
back home to our grand blue ampersand.

Yes, here is the hero, the amplified man
in parade, in decline, in decaying orbit,
ceasing the circle before he could form it.
_______

for Margaret's Play it Again, Toads # 14. Bursting with hubris, I did my own!

 
 

From A Sugar Bowl Womb

From a sugar bowl womb,
came the World's Sweetest Girl--
Me.

I'm like a vision at lake side,
talking rot to the swans--
and oh how I do go 
on
and
on.

I am formed of the frilly, the feminine, the fine--
thanks to old Daddy down the anthracite mine.

One step,
two step,
three step, five;
I'm made out of honey from an old bee hive.
Work bee, 
fly bee,
sleep bee, then
sink that stinger if he tries it again.

Church on Sunday, Monday do the wash.
See if it sticks or scrubs right off.
Do you think I'm pretty?
Everybody does--

ask around,
ask Alice,
ask sweetly,
ask the swans.
___________

Tell Me Everything

"Tell me everything," you said.
"Let's have no secrets between us."
Then you sent your ten sorceresses--
four around the hill, with one at the crest,
three together in the garden at rest,
and two down into the valley. Such beautiful dancers, these.

My name is Melusine,
a love letter written on wine-dark pages,
sealed in a jewelry box with a serpent in gold at the edges.
You were a spilled apple bushel,
not realizing that it is the seed, not the fruit that matters.
What was it in the one thing I asked you not to do,
not to know,
that made you so keen and cruel to know?

Not cruel to me, though I am angry; though I am gone.
You undid yourself, making me the instrument of it.
Don't you get it?
I asked only to be left alone at my bath,
that I might bobble the skulls of all my old loves
and wind around them in clumsy recompense.

The next time you come to a locked door, remember me.
Wind a grape vine around your hair,
wind the hemp and kick the chair,
do anything to give yourself a moment to think--
then, my used-to-be darling,
open that idiot mouth of yours
and swallow that forged metal apple, the key.
_______

For Magpie #258.

Thank you to Hedgewitch, for making me think of Melusine. 

Promise Me

Promise you'll always love me
as we sit with pastries and a cup of coffee before us;
say it after the bar holding up the awning of the cafe has fallen,
dazing you.

Say it now, when the sun is as bright over your shoulder
as a hijacked 747.
Say it now, when we can have the moment as lovers,
not as litigants;
soothe me with the words I long to hear.

When we were young, we believed
in every fantastic happy fiction we found in the sticky pages
of our heavily illustrated story books.
Then--
tornado.
Then--
regime change.
Then--
attractive others, smiling, as kind as undertakers.

Promise you'll always love me,
say it now, before the Narcan kicks in.
Say it now, while my heart is full for you--
don't wait until the mail comes,
full of better deals, and introductory rates.
Don't wait until the gurney begins to roll, 
and some sensible doctor gets a hold of you, making you sign things,
agree to things, and do things, on Wednesdays, when his office is closed.

Listen, life never turns out the way we pictured it.
Quick, before we crumple with age,
before our fingers curl back at us like strangers,
dropping things,
lost and pissing our pants a block away from home.
Promise me
that you'll always love me.

Then we'll finish our pastries,
and walk hand in hand until neither of us can tell anymore
why we came this way,
or how we managed to stay on our feet without each other.
That will be enough for me--
I give you my word.
_______

For Karin's mini-challenge at Real Toads: Promises

 

The Girl In The Gorilla Suit

The girl in the gorilla suit
walks on down that ole lonesome road.

At her side is her friend,
dressed as a giant banana.

"This is stupid!" complains the girl in the gorilla suit.
"I've never felt so humiliated!"

"Eat me," says the friend.
"You wish," gripes Girl-rilla.

Down the length of life and through the labyrinth of every day,
comes the overwritten,
the overwhelming,
the sublime and the simian.

Above the door at Danny's Coffee Shop,
a little bell rings.

Chloe the resident serial killer starts to say,
in a high pitched kiddie voice--

"Teacher says that every time a bell rings....
holy shit, it's a gorilla and a giant banana!"
Then she covers her mouth and giggles.

The girl in the gorilla suit starts to turn around to leave, but
Banana Girl grabs her arm and parks her in a booth.

"I'll go get us something," says Banana Girl.
"What'll it be sweethearrrt?"

"A banana smoothie." Girl-rilla is in a sour mood.
Fruit Girl looks hurt, pooches out her lower lip and lets it tremble.

"You're mean," she says with finality,
and spins like a yellow ballerina toward the counter.

Standing there, she is starting to get a headache.
Trying to decide, she puts her hand to her peel, and mutters, "God."

"Yes?"

God is general manager of Danny's Coffee Shop,
having worked her way up from drawing menu boards with chalk.

Sitting in the corner, the Succubus starts singing, very softly.
"Day-o. Day-ay-ay-o." With faux innocence.

God smiles at Banana Girl, to distract her,
and believe me, when God smiles it distracts the angels themselves.

"First one's free," she says, handing down the Good News.
"Cool beans," says Banana Annie.

Behind them, some guy wearing a turtleneck sweater and a beret stands up.
He whips out a notebook and reads from it through his sunglasses:

Wild whoop the twisted mask of political murder!
He lifts his finger for emphasis.

Bodies, carnal, knowing, floodlights of--
He is interrupted by a black panther flying through the air.

It is the Queen of the Vampires in black panther form, pouncing.
She drags her kill off to the coat rack and caches it there for later.

"Thanks, girl," chirps Chloe from behind her Rolling Stone magazine.
"Frickin' poets." She considers them almost as bad as golfers. 

The Girl In The Gorilla Suit takes off her gorilla head and sets it on the table.
She's got really bad hat hair, kind of like a spoiled pumpkin.

"You need to shave your legs and your pits, girl," says Banana Annie.
She gets smacked for her trouble, but doesn't spill their coffees.

The coffee at Danny's is the best in the world.
It can start your heart, raise the dead, save your soul, make your day.

Fruit Girl leans across the table and says, "Happy Valentine's Day, babe."
"Awww," says Girl-rilla, blushing. "You make a sappy happy monkey outta me."

All the Danny's girls pretend they didn't hear, but they're smirking,
except for The Queen of the Vampires.

The red hearts all over the place are making her catnippy and crazy.
"Down girl! chides Chloe. But it's no use; she'll be bonkers all day.
_________

Thanks to Mama Zen for the inspiration. She sees girls in gorilla suits!

 

 
 
 

 

Medea's Lament

Here's the news--
(though you never ask)
a chain grocery has bought Saint Sebastian's,
and the altar still sticky with our vows
will be torn out,

replaced with giant coolers,
jumbo pizzas,
grade A eggs.

Ha! I love irony.
Do you remember when you told me
all that cracked shit about the Golden Fleece?
Did I make fun of you,
there in our bed with your stupid adventure novel 
and our young hopes, sure as homing pigeons?
No.

And so you see, I am merciful after all,
at least to the degree of which I am capable. 
A few dragon's teeth make a thousand men,
and a thrown rock scatters them,
just as I had told you,
to save you,
back when I was almost innocent, and in love.

So how is Glauce?
Does she still dye her crispy pale locks with L'Oreal?
Is she old enough to drink yet?
Was she worth it?

Oh dear, I know that black grinding silence;
I've offended you.
I just called to tell you about Saint Sebastian's,
and to tell you the kids can't come this weekend.
Yes, I know it's your turn,
but they're going swimming.
Yes, alone, Jase. I told them they could.
In fact, I insisted.

You always imagine the worst of me.
No, I don't think that's a good idea, and besides,
they can't come to the phone right now.
What do you mean my voice sounds funny?
Happy, you mean? Satisfied? Like you would even know.

One last thing...
that winged goat thing that we had?
I pitched it.
Well Jason, I needed space in the family room
for food trays from the deli at the new supermarket.
Why, for the funerals, of course.
Poor Jason, you sound so at sea,
but don't worry,
I've taken care of everything,
just like I used to when you loved me and I was glad to do it.
________

for Kerry's challenge--"Is Love A Tender Thing?"