Wishbone

 Little fox,

I've come to confess to you

though I know your church is the chicken coop

and your Christ is appetite. 

If there is mist up on the mountain,

it's my spirit wandering.

The rest of me kneels here,

before you in the brambles like an overturned cup.

Alone in my bed, I have wondered

why I hurt my lovers, why they hurt me,

but I think it's because

angels are so similar to layers

especially when a spray of white feathers

in the air is all that's left.

Little fox, here is my spirit 

riding wrapped around your slender black feet.

Let's test our hearts and pull a wishbone--

you've got plenty cast aside.

If I win, I'll change my ways and skew to kind.

And if you win?

I'll call him, saying let's try again

knowing what will happen, and how sly my words have been.

Without Even the Grace to Blush

 

Humble is the sparrow

on the sill at the end of the year.

Sorry is the miller

who has no barley for the beer.

Vain are the dolls

wrapped with a bow on the box.

Red is the rooster

who rides in the jaws of the fox.

Soft is the ivy

where the robin who died lies so still.

Hard is hangman

who works in the dawn's bitter chill.

Sweet are the tulips

elegant in spring, in summer so terse.

So pale your dying love

as a corporal folded in a burse.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Sharon Olds.

A corporal is a folded linen cloth upon which the Host and chalice are placed during the celebration of Mass. The corporal is carried in a container called a burse for reasons of reverence. 

A Conversation About a Dog

 "I see that I'm too late," I said

"You don't see a damn thing. Open your eyes," he said. 

There was a train due, or that had already departed, or

that never was, or that was, but had long since gone.

"I think about the dog. A lot. I miss the dog."

"There was no dog," he said, taking a drag.

"Think about it," he added, blowing smoke my way.

There was a dog, but not his dog, or not the dog

he thought I meant, which we never had. 

"There was a dog." I was determined, and a little angry.

He laughed and took off his hat, dangling it from his hand.

"Whatever you say, you fucking crazy bitch."

Trains look small at a distance, deadly from up close.

There is time for one to become the other, either way.

I didn't answer. I wore a veil like a death mask.

I wore a small tam like a zucchetto. Pax vobiscum. 

"Wait here forever if you want, I'm leaving," he said

and stood up, but lingered, finishing his unfiltered.

"You still love me. I know you do," I said softly, viciously.

"You don't know shit. Try opening your mail sometimes."

There are letters that form words, others that stand for things;

letters one saves for years, others forgotten on a hall table.

"I miss that dog. he was a good dog," I said,

but there was no one there, and the station was gone.

__________

belatedly for Dora's Dverse Poetics: Dialogue It In! I will share with OLN. 

Image: Kate Bishop and Lucky the Pizza Dog

Music: Lydia Gray Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word

Saint Agnes On The Bus

 

On a bus in the city

on a slush-spattered morning

St. Agnes rode quiet to her grave.

Her sister was praying

her ear buds were playing

a song that was slow, sad, and brave.

The driver was sleeping

on a cushion of roses

and the wheel was a garland of sand

St. Agnes was pure

as few ever can be

mending wounds with a gold rubber band.

On the streets there were dogs

and they spoke of a healing

that cures every creature entire

St. Agnes is holy

and her sister is humbled

by the cost such devotion requires.

The bus turned to ashes

and the souls of the riders

had to carry all the things they must learn

St. Agnes beheaded

her sister lamented

that glory, to be sweet, must be stern.

_____________

Dear Katie

 

Dear Katie,

                  please pardon the confusion--

mine,

yours,

the weather's.

Today in group they wanted us to talk about

someone who really loves us.

I started to laugh

                            like slipping on ice

I couldn't wave myself fast enough

                            to save a fall

and the laughing became an ugly cry.

They like us to do things with our hands here

so I made

                a love potion for you.

Yeah, too late. like checking a smoking oven.

But,

       I can still portion by intuition

like how much to kiss you in the morning.

I used

a pinch of rust from a love lock

the memory of five black tulips

and 1 tsp essence of caramel fudge ice cream--

       Jeff Buckley ballads to taste

        baked at 350 until the moon turns silver like your poetry.

Gosh Katie,

                   they took away my books,

said I needed to engage with others.

I went back to group today and said, whoa, back up--

let's do that thing

                              from yesterday.

I pulled my shit together this time, not like before,

and I said,

                Katie mon amour

                 Katie je t'aime je t'aime, je t'aime.

This one bitch goes, you're not French,

you're not even Canadian you fucking freak

But she never stumbled drunk up the stairs with you,

poetry ringing in our ears and the summer night on our skin.

More to be pitied than scorned,

                                                    I can hear you say.

Anyway,

              love ya girl

Katie mon amour,

              Our Lady of Tulips and the Silver Moon.

________________

for Dverse Poetics, "From Your Valentine" hosted by Sanaa.

Music: Chantel Chamberland-- Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

The Saints of 1962

 

It was summer, 1962

and I was seven years old. 

I loved our screen porch where my mother never came

except for meals in the berry-bush cicada evenings.

It was my father's domain, and mine.

He read his newspaper or did crosswords

with a ballgame on the radio.

I loved the march music at the opening and in the beer ads. 

Sometimes the weatherproof rug was a dance floor

for my dolls when my brother wasn't there to make fun. 

My main thing that summer, though

was my cards spread out on the old

table, retired from the kitchen, now the grand dame of the porch.

I had prayer cards--

Saint Anthony, Saint John Bosco, Theresa of Avila,

colorful as comic books, bright as the light of Heaven.

I had baseball cards--

Rocky Colavito, Cuno Barragan, Orlando Cepeda

with dark woody borders

and early 60's dark caps

they looked as if they played in perpetual shadows.

There was incense

in the form of my father's Dutch Masters cigar.

There were the sacraments

and the sacrifice bunt.

The saints seemed backlit, blessed by Divine Hollywood.

The players cards were sometimes misprinted with a

green-tinted background as if they were undersea.

I liked to mix them, shuffled and fanned out.

Saint Sebastian, patron of athletes, his foot

resting on the top step of the dugout, gesturing

his fielders into position

with a wave of his scorecard,

or by messages brought by angels.

Jim Bunning striking out the devil with a wicked side-arm fastball,

making Old Scratch look foolish

as the vendors call and the fans

cheer. Jim walks off the field in the sunshine, no shadow in sight.

I have forgotten which cards I had, mostly.

Who was the beer sponsor? Schlitz? Blatz?

What had I done that spring?

What did I do that fall? In summer 1962

my father and President Kennedy were alive 

and so were the saints and ballplayers

On the table

on the screen porch

in summer, 1962.

_____________

for What's Going On? "Forgetfulness"

Music: Gale Garnett We'll Sing in The Sunshine

And Detroit Tigers march music radio intro

Summer

 

Here's a secret:

summer isn't real. 

It's a replica cooked up in an industrial oven somewhere.

Want to know 

how I know

how I know 

want to know?

hmm hmm hmm?

Sugar, I could enlighten you about a few things,

lay out the deets like an Alexa  but with way better hair.

You see, the real summer, 

the one we grew up in like 

wogs in a puddle with our

bikes and Kool-Aid and

sense of endless warm nose-in-the-green-grass days ahead,

she's gone, my dude. 

They have her secured at Gitmo or Bethesda or somewhere,

trying to find out HOW, like HOW, summer? Give it up already!

She's a clam, she tells them to fuck right off, so there she stays.

This new summer, the one we're in now

like koi fish swimming around saying looky,

our orbit is decaying, mayday mayday!

water temp rising, abandon ship!

is

not

real.

This cheap knock-off, this ersatz season, is as fake as an Eligible Bachelor

with a certificate of authenticity laminated and embossed

with a realistic official seal sticking out of his man purse. I mean

gimme a break.

You don't know me and shit, I get that.

I could just be somebody off their meds

or trolling you because because because...

because that's the wonderful thing she does!

So here is 

one

true

sentence,

and it is the truest sentence that I know:

I long for Fall, because Fall knows me, keeps the windows

yellow-lit and has my long sweater ready, laundered

and scented, laid out next to my cute sox and funky newsboy cap;

Fall wants me, lets me know that I am a work of art and a woman

in the right flesh at the right time to carry the right soul  and a mug

of hot mocha straight into an October morning and live there.

Now imma cry and bake in the phony replacement sun

and maybe if you're any kind of friend you'll say shh shh

baby and tell me softly

in my ear

about leaves

and frost

and hope

and all that happy hopscotch,

ok?

Hang a while with me 

and be my balm in Gilead, 

 my Saint Anthony to the lost.

___________

For Word Garden Word List--Whisper Down the Lane. 

I kind of lifted my man Ernest's words for that one part. No wait, it's an homage!

Music: Fontella Bass Rescue Me

Breviary

 

If you won't put wildflowers in my hand

don't leave them on my grave

I'll have the haunted hillside there

with oaks for palisades

around my bones and all my silent

reveries around

my life of soap and wax and flesh

I've left without a sound.

If you can't think me beautiful

like pennies on a sill

that catch the sunrise slanted light

which wakes the whippoorwill

or liken me to harbor water 

at the set of sun

then please don't give me tepid words

you'd say to anyone. 

If you need a holy man

with Latin on his tongue

to spin a mothball rosary

to tell you where I've gone

just leave me here the time of year

when winter's hardening

I'll curl myself in a berry husk

to rise in rainy spring. 

________

for Word Garden Word List--Madeleine's Ghost.

Beautiful Is A Tired Word

 

Beautiful is a tired word but I found you so

with the intensity of your obsidian hardness, and silver starburst flaws.

A black-leaved water lily with 

blooms of conventional white, like a nun

if the nun were carnal, and clever, 

and forever drowning in her own roots.

How like the Host are your white blooms,

a transubstantiation from habit-black to bland bright,

a false face like a lady's fan

or a death's head

and I just had to touch, take into me, and be wounded by

the carmine-edged cuttings you took from yourself.

Weren't we beautiful, for an hour as the day turned crimson,

making poetry from nothing but dirt and gold?

We wore only our flimsy paper costumes 

printed with deadnames and roses

and a garland of sun-shy violets for a crown. 

Finally, we saw each other for what we were--

one a shadow inside a censer swung by the claw of a talking crow

and the other as dim as a dog and as keen to roll in the foul thing it finds.

Beautiful is a tired word but I hung it around your neck

like a prize won for knocking down milk bottles on the midway.

a feat remembered with both pride and shame for far too long.

___________

for desperatepoets LOVE SONGS ON A GHOST JUKEBOX. 

images created with Bing A.I.

Music: The Japanese House Dionne

Chorus

 Our Lady of the Golden Voice

who makes the shepherds howl

and leaves the clerics' eyes all moist

then gifts them salted towels

Oh Lady fair, oh Lady cruel

riding a treble clef

admit us to your Music School

to chisel loose each breath.

____

for quadrille Monday

hosted by Linda Lyberg

Crescent Moon

 

There is a crescent moon beneath my heart

and a thorn placed by Saint Genevieve

wrapped in tissue paper and delivered 

by her hand from a golden sleeve. 

The orchards stand a foot in flood

and the sun denies the vines

as crowns deny Saint Genevieve

to wander dumbstruck blind.

The crescent moon beneath my heart

reflects in switchgrass reeds

and rolls like fog across the stars

that sent Saint Genevieve.

______

unprompted but shared with Dverse OLN hosted by Linda Lyberg

Saint Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris and her feast day was this past week, January 3rd. 

Handsome

 Nobody thought he was handsome except for me,

the sharp-elbowed stick girl with the camera around her neck.

Always, he would show up on the street early,

a midnight cat sliding in on private grooves, to sit and wait

on the curb for the other workmen and the Jonah bus 

that swallowed them away.

If I could've, I'd have built him a church,

with Host of egg sandwich and coffee black or white.

I'd swear I saw him take out a rosary one diesel-rattle dawn

and it was strung with candy skulls and baseballs.

I imagined his prayers were colorful foreigners wandering 

in warehouse downriver drab Detroit, hated by strangers, loved by God.

After an absence, getting off gin and bad poetry,

I returned to find him gone, the bus stop shifted, the lone tree down.

The starlings had lost their home, me my jones,

and my camera stayed empty for a year after that, like an unfed stray.

I asked a girlfriend once, "Remember that guy, the different one

we used to see waiting?" Ugh, she said, that one. 

Like I said, only I thought he was handsome, like rain, 

like new work boots pawned.

_______

 for Word Garden Word List--Dave Kelly.

Poor Betty

 

She built a doorway of hard-done-by and walked straight into it,

then said she'd been beaten by the future.

She placed a putty god in a mushroom soup sky

like a bumper sticker on a car made of wind.

Go, Betty, Our Lady of the Tinkertoy Triptych.

It's sad magic to watch a woman become an infant,

plastic ring on a tiny fat hand, teething on the little vile grenades

she treats like dollies, dumb scapegoats to blame for her dead dandelion smile.

______

for The Sunday Muse #212.

Poet

 

 

What I'm talking about is an ailment of spirit,

an ennui of the heart. 

It is not so much a seeking after angels

as a naming of devils.

Though these devils may sometimes be native,

most are introduced

like curare-tainted crosses slipped under our pillows

to teethe on at night.

We wobble into daylight, bright as fevers,

the lovely stricken

who learn to trick demons lazy for years or hours

or just the next blessed moment.

The well is poisoned, yes, but the hallucinations are rare,

butterflies of the injured mind.

We see loves bringing roses that are really lilies

for us discarded, already dead.

We are the gorgeous idiots, God's blind swans searching

for the blossoming branch,

mistaking the loaded barrel for Gilead's balm and leaving poems there

rolled, with ribbons, like answered prayers.

________

for Word Garden Word List #15 (Millay). 

top image: major arcana tarot "The Fool"

the amazing Toni Childs

Self-Portrait

 

Here I am, grime-faced at the bottom of a mine shaft. 

Here I am behind this ever-changing Halloween mask.

Here I am gorgeous, touched by God and given favor.

Here I am, so eat my dust, see you bitches later.

Here I am untouchable, unthinkable, unclean.

Ask dear mother, she'll explain exactly what that means.

Here I am quiet, just a watcher in the wings

made of shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings.

Here I am inside a book, inside an old cocoon.

Here I am reflecting light as if I were the moon.

Here I am in love with you, a fool to end all fools.

Here I am, a joker queen who can't tell shit from jewels.

Here I am to dazzle you with swooping magic madness.

Here I am one hour more, paralyzed with sadness.

Here I am, an urchin girl without a pot to piss in

to fetch your smoking pipe and tell you where you can put this in.

Here I am for Jesus, here I am for Puck.

To those who'd like to pin me down, I wish you all good luck.

_________

for Sunday Muse #198.

Line 8 taken from "The Walrus & the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll.

 

There Is Snow

 

There is snow

on the steps of a church where nuns' lives turn to dust.

a mute sun sleeps dazed in the low sky

and starlings let their wings fall, giving up all memory of flight.

The street is empty,

the silent intersection a cross

held in the still hands of an old priest

turned to stone forever.

Women in their black shawls move quickly

but the low sky has stopped and falls

bit by bit

on the steps of a church where an old priest has died.

The nuns are silent.

The women wear their black shawls,

and always,

there is snow. 

_________

I guess this is sort of a sketch. It interrupted what I was doing this morning and demanded to be written. There are a lot of abandoned churches in Detroit, and while editing this, I had them in mind. The congregations, often ethnic,  grew smaller and older until the parishes were no longer viable. 

Half Past Bitter Sweet

 

There's a peculiar kind of holy naive feeling that I get

when you step out of December

and through my box of memories that never happened yet.

Here's the ring that fell from a lost sea shell

and broke in shades of lonesome

to set the bungs and tie tongues of those who crave to tell.

In my dreams you are a hunter

when I'm falling in my sleep

and I can't put my finger on it

but its far and fey and half past bitter sweet.

You'd tell me it's just bullshit if you talked to me at all

so I spend the hours wounded

making feathers for a blackbird who sold them for a call.

In the garden Quasimodo is looking for his bell

and hes crying but can't hear it

except when he gets near it and can't say if it will make him worse or well.

In my dreams you are a dust-star

when I'm flying in my sleep

and I can't put my finger on it

but it's far and fey and half past bitter sweet. 

_______

for Word Garden Word List #6 (Laura Marling)

Note: this poem has nothing whatever to do with clergy. I liked the picture for other reasons. It's a love poem.