Cricket

 A bold black cricket came in from the night

with a message wrapped around his leg

I offered him bread, my body, my bed

and an indigo blue Russian egg.

He had only the song that crickets know

taught them by their dying mothers

He played it on the silk and scar of my skin

and told me there would be no others.

My hair is blond, his body was black

and hard as the truth in a mirror

The night was warm, the dawn too quick

and the last time drew one season nearer.

_____

for dverse creepy crawlies. 

In The Yellow Kitchen

In the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters
where green ivy vines surround the window,
spirits come in from indigo hours
looking for words kept in earthen jars

in the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters.
We keep a coffee pot of enamel
cream yellow to soothe late hour drowsers
unseen and hungry for a kiss, a ribbon, a caramel,

in the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters
where green ivy vines surround the window.
Mornings as easily as ghosts arrive, like spring snow
collected on sills as the May-crow appears

in the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters
where green ivy vines surround the window
and spirits come in from indigo hours.
There is Mucha on the walls, Parrish on a matchbook

in the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters
where green ivy vines surround the window,
and spirits come in from indigo hours
looking for words in earthen jars of cinnamon sticks, brown sugar, and flour.
_______

Upstairs, And The Fine Things Kept There

Don't dream.
Don't sleep.
Not yet.

Did you like dinner?
It was simple,
made from ordinary things.
A little pasta, sauce, and spice.

I brushed garlic on the bread.
I felt your eyes
and the warmth from the oven.

Relax. 
Lace our fingers.
Stay.
_______

for this.

someone once played this song, "Dreams", for me and told me I had a "totally amazing mind." But as another song by another singer has said, I'm just another silly girl.

 

Rotten Fruit

Here is your rotten fruit
taken from a gorgeous vine--
the lush one, the lovely one
in its season--mine.

Roll the dough, crimp the crust,
spoon the rotten fruit inside--
bake it well, then go to hell
where with these sweets you may abide.
______

for Poetry Pantry #358.

 

Stock, Celery, Carrots

For the soup--
stock, celery, carrots.
What of the egg, the seed, your hand in mine
last winter, or the one before?

The chicken, the garden, the blackberry summer
never knew what hit them--
Look now and you won't find a damn thing.

I stir stock, celery, carrots--
the pot steams my windows til I'm blind.

Still, I go through the motions, because that's the expected thing.
I don't even feel the bowls in my hand--
I have no appetite at all, and yet I am the Mistress of Delicious Things

Consumed by others and praised
until they set their wet spoons down to stain the cloth.
_______

A bitchy little number for Kerry's challenge about time, at Real Toads.

Good Woman

Baby, I'm a good loving woman;
I can make you feel like birds are flying all through you,
and singing their heads off, too.

Honey, I'm a good faithful woman;
Once I'm yours, I go deaf and blind to anybody else,
knowing only the braille of a singular devotion.

Sleep in, sweet thing--
I'll put on heels and get a job.

Anything you want in this big round world,
I'll find it,
fetch it,
bread it and fry it.

Sugar pea, did I ever tell you how my last love kissed and crossed me?
Never mind, I made your favorite dessert!
Just sit.
Just enjoy.
Just try it.
__________

Some culinary foolishness for LolaMouse. The image is "Always" by Jim Doran.

Alternatives To Seafaring

I've got a bed like a half shell soft,
and a comb for a hundred strokes;
a parrot who speaks like a tony duke
with a holder for his smokes.

There's a vine on the railing and rose in a jar
that floats in my mermaid's pool;
drop your duffel and come to mother--
be a sailor but not a fool.
_______

The earliest poem I can remember being truly fascinated by was Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus", which my father read to me because he thought I might like it. I did, and would periodically beg him to read it again. He did, bless him, he did, and so I offer this poem with its sound advice to stay the hell off of sailing ships!

For "What sparked your poetic heart?" at Real Toads 
 

Chanel and Shibboleth

You held a grapefruit in one hand
and a knife in the other,
the morning you called down a coffee ground curse
in my kitchen, off the bedroom, in blackberry June.

Mousers know, as crows do,
that an unmade bed in the afternoon 
is sweet green thick as an ivy vine,
a tangle of moon drawn out before the sun is even gone.

You knew, standing there with your summer robe open,
your eyes dreamy-closed,
and the grapefruit in your hand,
what you could do to me, 
and how to kitty the solstice whichever way you chose.

Now, it is always night, always summer,
and blackbirds do your bidding at every blue hour;
I can kiss someone else until my lips are bruised,
but the pot is cold, the kitchen is empty,
and the robe hangs itself for trying, but 

can't
bring you back
no matter that I promise it Chanel and shibboleth,
pretty as a calico cat.
______

Izy at Real Toads says, write about a curse, so I have. 

Fun fact: calico cats are nearly always female.

 
 

Spotter

I have written often about astronauts,
and yet,
there are very few of them in my neighborhood
and none
in my bed or at my breakfast table.

I wonder if the loneliness of the moon
stayed on them and around them
like a gray empty dust,
keeping them from kissing anyone?

I have often wondered, too,
at the way they only endure my tender attention to their visors
with my lavender-scented cloth
and my blush.

Here you are, made of stars, taking my breath away
with just the swirl and fact of you.
Knock knock--
it's me.
There were dogs sent up before me,
and you loved them;
why not love me now?
I have the same easy eyes
and goofy logic.

"She's a space case," they say about me.
"She's way out there!"
but I'm not,
I'm right here,
standing on the bright red X of my heart,
up on the tips of my toes, searching the skies,
trying to flag you down
win you
spin you
guide you in.
__________

The Finger Knife

It's the fever place
and the fracture fall,
with a strip of lace wrapped around it all.

A dusk-gone door
and a small cool hand,
with the worst of it in a silk-knot band.

Coo coo
sings the cage bird
melancholy-sweet,
coo in the morning while the whole house sleeps;

Coo coo
sings the soft throat
coo brings the cat,
the silent little calico the sugar man keeps.

It's the bent porch rail
and the dahlia bloom,
with a candle and a snuffer set in every room.

It's the sugar man's house
with his child-bride wife,
claiming each one edge of the finger knife.
_____

image by SueAnn, in connection with dverse poetics.

Full Moon

I want my hands to be
two crescents--
one each, warm upon
your face,
and, also
your hip.

I want to lay with you,
as close as fur to the fox--
I want to say,
I love you sweetheart,
and, also
that there is only one sky
and one earth curved close against it.

________

Written on the night of the full moon, for STWIASD

Serpent

I was longer than desire,
Than regret--
Longer, even, than a bible lesson.

I had no legs to stand on,
But I had backbone--
Miles of it.

I swung low from my branch like a rain cloud;
Falling was inevitable--
At least I kept it graceful.

"See how smooth I am,
How sinuous," I whispered.
"And with a tongue like you wouldn't believe."

Eve laughed,
And spun her wedding ring.
"Don't be a shit head," she cautioned me.

My red and yellow diamonds made me look like a playing card;
I posed a wager with myself--
Rattling as innocently as a baby.

Swinging my pretty heart-shaped head near her ear,
I said all the unprintable things
That a girl might like to hear.

She blushed, bit her lip,
Shivered, then said she had to go--
"At least take this apple," I urged, wrapping myself around her shoulders.

I knew from the start how special she was,
How divine, how discreet, how venomous--
She took the fruit in her fine sharp teeth,
And, smiling,
Filled it with promise.

 _

Snow White, Hopeful Lycanthrope

"I got a woman
Way over town,
That's good to me.
Oh yeah!"  --Ray Charles

I keep an actor in a small suitcase on a high shelf.

I wait until it snows,

Then I take him out.


 I love a woman in the flatlands.

She can turn me inside out just cos she wanna,

And she wanna, sometimes, when the moon is new.


I told the actor,

"Here is your mark,"

Then pointed to a place where the floorboards were missing.


He laughed and said,

"I know why you love the snow.

It is because you, too, are always falling."


I wrote a letter to My Love.

I blush to say I begged.

I said, "If you don't do me soon,

I will turn into a saint,

Or some sort of Sunday school teacher,

And that would be a diabolical shame."


I keep my heart

hidden in a cookie jar

in my kitchen.


I keep the actor high,

and only feed him limes.

He says you won't come,


But I howl and call

all night in the blizzard,

just in case you do.

 * * *

Scorpion

if a scorpion
wraps herself around your heart,
don't
don't look
don't look at anybody else.

if a scorpion
curls her tail around your heart,
don't
don't love
don't love anybody else.

if a scorpion
has wrapped herself around your heart,
love
love like it
love like it's the last day you will see--
that's all
that's all that there may be--
love dangerous love
now that you've found it;
lucky heart
with the scorpion's tail wrapped 'round it.
_______

Le Printemps

I traveled across an icy place.

My shoes fit badly.

I reminded no one of Swan Lake.



I arrived, in a snow storm, in front of a coin laundry, under an overhang.

The pavement was wet.

An old black man was mumbling on a bench.

Cars crawled by like thoughts through a hangover.



There was a woman there,

With a baby on her hip,

And a cigarette in her hand.

There was no bible god in sight, and so I

Put my hand to the back of her month-old highlights and kissed her

Like a butterfly landing on a pastry.



When I leaned back to gaze into her eyes,

She squinted and said,

"Who the fuck are you?"

Standing there in my old parka and knit hat, I said,

"I am the Spirit of Spring, baby."

She was wearing boots, jeans, a brown ribbed turtleneck and a red flannel shirt.

She took a drag, blew it out, and then stood there in the smoke cloud

As if it were dry ice.

She seemed to decide something, tossed away her smoke and tilted her head.

I followed her.

The baby looked back at me as if I were some amazing talking toy.



She lived above the coin laundry.

There was crap all over the place;

A little portable stereo on the floor,

Books on the couch,

Off the kitchen a stuffed-full pantry with no door.

I said, "I came to the coin laundry to get clean."

She said, "I came to the coin laundry to get kissed."



In the morning, she kicked me out,

But with a smile.

The baby was fussing behind me as I went down the stairs.

All my clothes smelled like an ashtray.

I had trouble getting through the downstairs door to the street

Because of my glorious, white, soft-feathered wings,

And everywhere I looked,

The apple trees had blossomed overnight.

_______

amazing photograph by Daryl Edelstein

linked to magpie 48 and One Shot Wednesday 28

The Dime Priest

I sat with the dime priest on the steps of Saint T's, like a paper cup blown up against a holy statue in a garden.

I said,

"I am falling, falling. I am an ice chunk;

My mother the sky has farmed me out to her sister the earth,

Via express delivery."



The dime priest looks over, his huge hands dangling over his knees as if waiting for some greater work.

"What's wrong, Pookie?" he asks me simply, tilting his chin up.

He could have starred in movies.

"The tense has changed," I point out irrelevantly.

"It always does," he tells me with a shrug.



We watch the traffic in front of us, and the clouds above. No stop lights there. No brakes, either.

I love the dime priest. He is so queer and kind.

"Maybe I should say confession."

He looks down and laughs, his broad shoulders shaking.

"I may as well take it from a cat. You don't know what 'no' is, except for just an obstacle,

Something placed out of reach

Just to vex you."



Why can't I marry the dime priest?

I would make sure his vestments were always clean and mended.

He would make sure never to let me fall into the deep end of my heart.

We would fix our favorite coffee;

Always defend each other to strangers,

Never have sex,

And be smiled upon by some god somewhere,

Wouldn't we?



I am a spill, spreading.

He is the quicker picker upper.

"Who is she, Pookie?"

I falter, like a papier-mache bird caught in the rain.

"She is out of reach, like God.

She is funny and crazy, like the commandments.

She rides inside of something else, like Jonah.

Her faith wavers, like the heat over a fire.

She's just some woman I met," I add miserably.



He will look over at me, with those matinee idol eyes

And I will see that he's on to me,

Like everybody's on to me--

And he will know that I love this one,

Just like everybody knows I do--

And I will fall apart on the steps of Saint T's, and he will pat me with his bear paws and say,

"Aw, Pookie, it's gonna be okay."

I will say, into his black shirt, "The tense has changed again."

He will say, "It always does,"

And then he will be

The dollar priest

And I will be

Scattered change.

______

for One Shot Wednesday

Fritter Shack

There's a half door
On the back
Of the shack where I make
Corn dogs
Fritters
And all such like as that,
But I'm thinking on
When you come on
And make her take three steps back
Then bend low down
And bow to the crowd
While your hand strokes the deep brown side of her neck...

You are a barrel racer
And I am a taster
Of all that comes back bubbling golden,
And they love us
Each in our own way
Until it is time for closing.
You know that
When you wear that
Pearl snap shirt half open
I can't half think
On nothing but the
Sweet
Skin
At the base of your throat,
And oh,
Oh,
Baby,
Come on in my fritter shack
Make me take
Three steps back;
You know, when you look at me like that
My heart already has
One knee to the ground;
And when you trace your fingers around my ear,
I'm desperate to feel your palm
Alongside my throat
I almost disappear
Like smoke
For sheer desire and want of you, my darling girl.

For a few moments,
We lean together,
Then we're gone like blazes,
Hell for leather
Barrel racers,
Confection makers,
Two as one
Gone hot in the half light of the
After-closing
Melting gorgeous
Setting summer sun.

_________

for magpie 36

Errand

Curiosity killed the cat.

Satisfaction brought her back,
Down the road and up the track,
That's where I'll be waiting.

Autumn stole from Summer's shells,
Reds and pinks and silver bells,
Run the woods and hide in Hell,
That's where I'll be waiting.

Shame the Devil, make him sigh,
With seven truths and seven lies,
Then come to me, sweet Love of mine,
You know that I'll be waiting.

Lightning is a little tap
That splits the tree and burns it flat,
A kiss is nothing more than that,
So kiss me, little Kitty.

Tell your man you're fetching cream,
Then jump the fence and come to me,
Truth is what it needs to be,
So dark, so quick, so pretty.

_________