Entre Nous, George....

George Tooker self portrait

Oh, don't look so stunned,
as if God had unfriended you.
Just keep tying your sweater arms around your shoulders like that,
and the right man will come through.

Now let's talk about your barber.
Either grow it out or shave, but not this.
You're more Paris than Parris Island, and that fivehead, oh my.
So wrong. So remiss.

Get that shell. It's for you!
It's Clara Bow calling, she wants her lips back.
Here's a drapery, wrap it around that tree trunk as an ascot.
You're welcome. 
My lips are sealed;
I'm the very soul of tact.
_______ 

For mag 289.

 

Lillesden

Sure, we've let a few things go, but
the moon got in our brains through the skylight
and try as we might, everything seemed silver
and possible
and dreamy creamy to us, while all you had to say was,

"Girls, girls, girls," in that clotted voice of yours.

Now, we will do what we will,
as slowly as lunar transit,
and glacially as math comprehension
when there are madflowers in the spring,
outside the ruptured panes
of mind and custom.

Girls, girls girls,
that's what we are, or were, at least,
now lazing with roses in our teeth
and all the time in the world to
receive and revive
our lovers driven to insensibility

by the clock-stopped way
we do them when the dawn is postponed,
attendance dispensed with
and the Ouija board stuck between YES and NO
like a stutterer who can't speak and so sings
like a hypnagogic hallucination of

Girls,  girls.   girls.
 

Satisfaction

I'd like to borrow your senses,
sight and smell.
What is coffee, or a kiss
by the time you're done with it?

My darling hyena, short of ass but blessed in jaw,
it's hard to tell what sex you are,
except for your feminine tendency
to make docile grass-eaters think they ran right into your maw.

Oh how we laughed over that, until, honey,
you noticed I have no spots, but brought the pride on every side.
_____

"Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought her back."

For Kerry's mini-challenge at Real Toads.

Image from weheartit.com
 

Memento

You gave me a lock of your hair,
and said--

Well, I can't recall. Something about love.

From the lock of hair,
a head

began to grow, but with lips no one could kiss.

The gray skin, the eye askew, the wild black hair,
half dead--

it spoke in the night and told me you don't care.

Your body is sweet, but the head is there
when you are not,

and honest. Oh, the things you kept from me!
and so much
it has to say.
______

Book Review: "Fin & Lady"

Fin & Lady by Cathleen Schine

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There is a pretty good short story here. Unfortunately, it's a novel. In 1996, I read a book by this author called "The Love Letter." I loved it. This one, not so much.

Eleven year old Fin, having lost both parents, goes to live with his charismatic, beautiful, but capricious and flighty half sister Lady in Greenwich Village in 1964. A lot of reviewers didn't like Lady, but I did, despite her flaws. Lady keeps a trio of male admirers strung along for years as Fin grows into a teenager. One wonders why they stick around for so long, or why Lady keeps tossing them crumbs. Two hundred pages of it is just way too much.

A big problem I had with the book is the mystery narrator. One doesn't find out until way near the end of the novel who this narrator is, and it annoyed me so much, I went to the spoilers at Goodreads to find out ahead of time. Stupid device, in my opinion, to have the story told at a remove by some unidentified speaker who occasionally intrudes with "Fin told me later" or such like.

The end of the novel IS kind of sweet (for the most part), but isn't worth plodding through the rest of the book to get there. If I could give this two and a half stars, I would. It isn't awful, but the fact that it took me nearly a month to make myself finish this short book speaks for itself. The characters are sort of interesting, but not interesting enough. Read "The Love Letter" instead.



View all my reviews

Black Walnut

The moon shows through the filigree
of my black walnut tree's
branches.

All summer, the boastful sun 
kept after her, one
day into the next,

And though she did not love him,
she needed him. She thinned
by degrees.

The moon paints my black walnut tree silver
where the thick green of her
is gone.

The sun comes less and less, bored
with his conquest;
the moon stays, but is mad, 

And my walnut tree lays her beauty down
upon the earth cold and brown,
indifferent as a grave.
__________

Incident In Little Egypt

After the crash--
so bashful, nothing to say
with your proud head
in the windshield that way.

I told you not to let Cerberus drive--
there are cats everywhere
on the center line 
with their nine lives.

I am made of cream; you of dust--
Who's queen now?
Me, alive, nonplussed,
switch-tailed, not sorry much.
______ 

For Flash 55 at Real Toads, with inspiration from "Oh, Fortuna".