Rain Jar Juju Taxi

Mantis skull dancers
romance their mummy women
down where the rain jar juju taxi waits...

Sitting on an ice stool,
the cat-hearted dharma hustler
deals out the Rimbaud, the strawberry, the one-eye...

Kiss the ghost for me,
I'll miss you, but
the empty hangers sounded just like church bells at my back
early this morning,
when the stairwell slipped its skin and called my name.

______

Beep Beep

Caroline loved Megan.
Loved her olive skin.
Loved her in her suede boots, coming in the door.
Loved her, next to her, sleeping.

Caroline loved Megan, but,
Megan's crafts turned cruel.
Who knew that the big wind would come?
Who knew that knitting needles, left out,
Could become arrows?

In the emergency room,
A young intern who had been on duty since Tuesday
Laughed, because
Caroline looked like Wile E. Coyote
With a knitting needle through her head;
But Wile E. Coyote
Never looked so terribly confused, and lost.

After the accident,
Caroline changed.
She began to dream of stars, like children make,
With points.
She began to see the world like an old tv
With horizontal lines rising, rising, rising,
And she sees the flag, with its stripes
Promptly at 2 a.m.
Every night.

Caroline asks Megan,
"Take me to the salt flats."
There,
Megan holds her hand,
With silent tears running down her dusky cheeks.

Once, Caroline loved Megan,
But now she can't remember.
A little blank,
She looks around.
Another storm could come, you know.

Caroline smiles her weird vacant smile,
The one that Megan can hardly bear.
"Beep beep," she says,
Looking at the sky.
As Megan turns away, she says it again,
Like a broken blonde doll.
"Beep beep,"
But she can never catch up with herself,
Or the teasing after-image of contentment
In the foggy broken clock of her mind.

______


for OLN 8

The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen

(Note: my power has been out for some 50 hours, until tonight. I was very disappointed not to be able to be part of Sheila's excellent silent movie prompt at dverse,  but my dear friend Hedgewitch stepped in and saved the day. First, she patiently transcribed my poem over the phone, and then posted it on her own blog, Verse Escape. You can find it, and the comments that people kindly left, HERE. Thank you, Hedgewitch, for being a true friend above and beyond the call of duty, and also for resisting the urge to add Vikings and brush hogs to my poem!)

The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen


The silent movie queen
drops her parfait spoon,
and up comes her arm,
bent at the elbow,
delicate fingers curled at her cupid's bow mouth;
a single tear
falling from her fabulous raccoon eye.

Who should be watching this--
Who should be riveted by this--
but the talk show radio host.

Given a mobile of microphones
by his parents
as a baby,
his mother cradled him, drenching him in her love,
and whispered,
"We're on the air."

The radio talk show host
dreams of surrounding the silent movie queen
with his mellifluous devotion.
Above their bed,
a red light;
next to their bed,
a bank of telephones,
all off the hook.

He believes that she
can teach him not to fear being seen.
He believes that she,
enraptured by his kisses,
might express her joy
on a charming sepia-toned
dialogue card.

The silent movie queen
tilts her head,
seems to laugh, almost child-like
though she must now be over a hundred.

Her curls,
her dress,
her wide-brimmed bouquet of a hat;
all of these fill the radio talk show host with longing,
and strike him dumb with desire,
just as the ending credits come up.

In the dark, no one can see him.
In the dark
he hears her calling him
from across the years.
Calling,
calling,
caller,
(he whispers)
don't hang up.

_________ 

top photo: Mary Pickford

bottom photo: Theda Bara

 

Musical Interlude

Anna Ternheim sings "(In Other Words) Fly Me To The Moon." 



  
Note: the song is less than four minutes long, despite what it says. 

12 Mile Road

Up a steep dirt drive
Atop a small hill
Above a busy four lane road,

Stood a brown house
Amidst bare trees
Heavy-barked and old.

Empty mailbox.
Empty window frames.
Rusted door lock.

I always wondered,
Did someone write to say,
"I'm coming home"?

Did someone cry,
Kiss the letter,
Take the good china down?

Were they young?
Was the feather bed soft?
Did she say, "I'm three months on"?

Why did they leave?
Where did they go?
I'll never know.

The hill is empty.
There's just the moon.
The house is gone.

_____

 

Candi McIntosh And The Tiger

Candi McIntosh is swallowed by a tiger.
Now, she can compose herself and think what to do
Without his snow and caramel face turning her to goo.

He is the same tiger
Who used to get in trouble for catching the birds off Mrs. Densmore's feeder,
Taking Tweety,
The feeder,
The branch it hung from,
And some of the siding off the house in the effort.


But his parents had hauled their childlessness behind them
For too long,
Like a house trailer filled with bowling balls.
How could they scold him?
In the end,
He received chocolates, not chastisement, for his crimes.

In high school,
He excelled at debate--
A remarkable thing for one who could not speak!
And yet,
Who would argue with him?
Who could mistake his meaning
When faced with his warm breath,
His rough tongue,
Or his basso profundo contented sighs?

Candi McIntosh never had a chance.
From the moment she saw him,
She wished to be the stars
So that when he moved silently across the sky at night,
His great soft paws
With all of their implied and restrained power,
Would touch her at every step.

Still,
The wedding was marred
By his insistence upon marking all the pews
And by his repeated lunging at the minister,
So that the vows were delayed
And disrupted
Again and again.

Now, after seven years together,
And so may beefsteaks and band-aids between them,
He has swallowed her.
Curled inside of him,
If her phone is ringing somewhere, she can't get to it;
If someone has rung the doorbell,
She can't come.
In the darkness of him,
She is eclipsed.

It is always true, however,
That a woman has her ways.
No matter what he may believe,
Or how sure and complacent he may have become,
She can stroke him
Or stagger him
As she chooses,
From within,
And there is nothing he can do about it now
But to tread softly
And--a little confused--
Sit center ring
To await his Mistress's command.


_____


for dverse OLN 7

Blue Jenna

Jenna loves to watch you dance.
She thinks you're
Curved easy
Like the ends of vines,
The vines she would love to stay twined inside of
If she could.


Jenna thinks there's just you in the room.
She thinks you're
Sexy and silver
And singular as the moon,
The moon she would love to lie in the light of
If she could.


Jenna is crazy
And sees what she wants to see;
She sees what you cannot see in yourself
Blind as blind can be.


Jenna loves to wait for you
In the moonlit vine leaf bower
Where moon and vine
Like love and time
Curl cold and soft around her.

______