Lucy the Tiger-Human Hybrid

 Lucy, the tiger-human hybrid

litigated against the lab and strutted out one day

to a clatter of cameras and bright lights.

She's all about mid-century modern.

Her home is all in avocado and burnt orange,

even her skin between the stripes. 

She is uncommonly graceful

but life is awkward. Women won't let her

hold their babies for fear of bloody murder.

She has difficulty finding clothes that fit her.

Terrified clerks back away big-eyed, never thinking

of how these reactions hurt her. 

On a friend's birthday, Lucy jumped out,

shouting "Surprise!" and the friend fainted.

These snafus happen all the time.

"Sweet ink!" crows the hipster at the coffee bar,

She does not correct him. "And you must work out!"

He may be just the guy she's had in mind.

At Lucy's house, retro fashion reigns supreme.

She and the kittens groove to the Stray Cats. 

Her man is strictly cutting edge and avant-garde.

Life is so much better now, she says.

Things worked out thanks to lawyers and latte,

and the only thing she charges is her credit card.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Apathy.

Fearless Journeys Into Foreign Lands

In my 20s, I loved the newsstand.
Neatly stacked out-of-town editions might have been
pillows for my future lovers, just arrived, or
stepping stones across a river, never the same one twice.

Daddy would have been proud, seeing my devotion
to the early street, the Sunday supplement and the sports final. 
All of my poems, then, were papier-mâché,
and I wrote them around the crumbs from French bread,
and between bottles of Milwaukee beer.

These days, I have become a homebody,
but when I press my face to your skin, 
I always smell newsprint along with shea butter and lavender.
Part of the pleasure in loving another woman is the feeling of being on home ground,
as easy as raiding your own kitchen in the dark.

Still, love is always a fearless journey into foreign lands.
Even though I practice a daily discipline of advice columns and horoscopes,
having learned the language of you the way a novitiate learns about faith;
and even though I find home in your hair, your eyes, your voice,
you will always be feathered with a thousand pages that I somehow missed.  

So, here goes:
down the hatch, take that turn, trust that guide.
I love you,
fearlessly,
and always in the manner of front page news.
______