12 Stairs, 1 Bed, 2 Windows

Take the white stairs made of half moons--
carry your shoes in your hand,
and keep the tickets we won't use
in your cloth shoulder bag with your prayer cards.

I have fixed the things you like--
Hungarian goulash,
China tea,
as well as a poem celebrating your black-cat eyes
and your hair that makes
bats weep for jealous.

If it rains, and it will,
we can leave the window open just a bit,
allowing the ozone breeze
to love you as I do--

without choice,
without reserve,
and with wordless gratitude for the Andean alpaca blanket
that we shake out and come together beneath;

charmed,
I'm sure,
and perfect

just like charge and strike.
________

alternate title "Charmed, I'm Sure"

for Mary's Mixed Bag "windows"

 
 

Union

In the winter,
I married a small wooden box.
I carried my devotion around in a coal scuttle,
and named each of the kitchen utensils
as if they were children who might one day attend university
and, subsequently,
slowly forget us.

My husband was made of cherry wood,
wide as he was deep.
I mailed him the dust from the nursery
where we grew liniment and bitters
from window boxes buried under the floor boards.

One day, going on spring,
the sky turned the color of a fouled well.
It rained river perch;
they came down inside overcoats of ice, like a devil's fairy tale
and all the while,
my husband was one lung and I was the other--
with no heart in between,
inspiring and expiring
without any conscious thought at all.
_______

for Mary's Mixed Bag "connection" at Real Toads.

A Simple Guide For Gentlemen Of A Certain Age On How To Avoid Summary Execution While Visiting My Favorite Sandwich Shop

• do not pontificate
• do not discuss the lottery. you are not going to win it. ever.
• do not discuss people you worked with twenty years ago at the plant. do not try to puzzle out whether they now live in east bumfuk or new slagheap.
• do not describe your old sports injuries. do not display them.
• do not share your thoughts about any of your ex-wives.
• do not discuss automobile parts/engines/makes/models
• do not hold forth about sports. any sport. 
• do not jingle coins in your pants pocket
• do not shout a conversation with your buddy five tables away.
• do not stand in the doorway with the door open during winter months while wrapping up your convo with your friend for fifteen minutes.
• do not tell war stories.
• do not complain about the price of a cup of coffee. do not announce that another shop sells it more cheaply. just go there. now.
• do not hold lengthy discussions of how best to get to east bumfuk or new slagheap if you are not going there immediately. 
• do not play "let's remember".
• do not discuss bow hunting. 
• do not turn to the mail lady who is trying to eat lunch, read her book, and catch thirty minutes down time, and ask if it is hot or cold enough for her, how much stamps cost, or whether she knows your cousin's friend's neighbor, who works for the east bumfuk post office (or maybe it's new slagheap). 

Use these life-saving tips. You're welcome.
_______

for Mary's Mixed Bag...pet peeves.

Girl and Oak

I was young once, living on hope and ten dollars
In an upstairs flat in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I used to eat at The Busy Oak, where junkies and drunks lived in the weird apartments on the second and third floors,
And I went to the movies at The Washington.

I remember buying a jacket at Joe's Army Navy Surplus,
And a bright red scarf at some corner boutique where 80s chic was so thick that it made this ordinary girl feel out of place.

The sky was a brilliant September blue that day,
And I was on my last fine free days of being semi-employed,
An art I had perfected all through my twenties...

I needed time to read Vonnegut and Tolstoy,
And to go see Far From The Madding Crowd and Desert Hearts.

Late that afternoon I sat on the wood floor of my little place,
Listening to Joni sing I Had A King, while I read the album jacket and my dog slept in the only chair.

My door was open, as if to let the future in;
I was getting sober and I was getting older.

Who knew then, that I would shortly get a real job, a car, 
And marry some other damaged soul?

Who knew that the Busy Oak would become trendy stores for out of towners,
Or that The Washington would become a stage theater?

Who knew that I would ride by those places every day, a couple of decades later,
Having divorced, come out, come clean,

Or that I would still listen to Joni sing about kings and seagulls,
And still wear a red scarf against the chill?

Not me,
whoever I was,
waving to her future self
going by on the street like a ghost begun but not yet walking the earth.
_______

for Mary's Mixed Bag "neighborhood"