Memorial Day

I watch my neighbor back out of his driveway.
He told me he is going to his brother’s grave
to honor a fallen hero,
place flowers or a wreath
his wife and kids in tow,
a visit before a picnic and water-skiing.

I did not lose anyone in a war.
I have no death to remember.
My Dad survived the Merchant Marines.
Once he broke a man’s arm who tried to jump him.
My Step-Dad (Pork Chop Hill) and Father-in-Law (Battle of the Bulge)
fought in horrors they would never share.
My Sister-in-Law’s dad medaled in PTSD
before there was a name for it,
head in his hands in the dark,
sitting alone depressed for hours before he died young.

When Memorial Day comes, I ignore it,
avoid the flags, parades, sonorous music,
pierced by the sound of TAPS,
no picnics or water-skiing or golf,
perhaps cut the lawn.

No one I know died in a war.
Maybe that is why I want a different memorial on this day.
Maybe that is why I see the irony,
remembering what never should have happened.
Instead, my heart breaks when I see the rows and rows,
white boxes lined up in Heaven.

Reminds me of what war truly is
and why it is seldom honorable
but a sacrifice made to some unrelenting god
like the animal sacrifices of old,
striving to appease, never ending.

I know I am not supposed to feel that way,
believe instead that our freedom was won,
cling to the Truth like a flag clutched at the graveside,
guns saluting, honor saved.
I know better.

My neighbor cannot know what I believe.
I cannot ever mention it to him.
His brother died, not mine.

Originally published in The Literary Nest 

Fear at My Doorstep

Today I came up to my front door,
Fear lying on the stoop.

He just lay there looking up,
eyes staring at me.

He changed every time I blinked
to make him go away,

which he didn’t, making me
more frantic because I had ice cream

in my grocery bag that would melt
if I didn’t put it in the freezer.

He was a shape shifter
He looked like a worried line

on the brow of my checkbook,
like my oldest daughter

warbling her songs in California
without health insurance,

like my husband’s coming stress test,
wires strung all over the stoop

like clogged arteries,
easy to trip over.

Fear wouldn’t get out of the way,
just lay there shifting.

This might have gone on forever,
the ice cream soaking the bag.

But I stepped over him,
went into the house

shut the door hard on him.
Put down the grocery bags,

the ice cream in the freezer.
Looked at the kitchen clock

saw that it was time
to pick up my grandson from school,

his single-dad father
working late again.

I thought of escaping out the back door,
but went out the front.

Stepped over Fear
and went right on my way.

Originally published in The Literary Nest

Trumpelstiltskin

You can trap the hearts of
American democracy
in your narcissistic web of lies,
pitch them into a dungeon of untruth,
command they bow to you,
demand they turn gold into straw.

You can love your own voice,
bathe in your own glee,
sing in your tub
as you scrub your hairy soul
till all those who worship you
are raw.

Rumpelstiltskin needn’t crow his name,
dancing before that fire.
But, like you, he had no self-control.
He warbled; you twitter
and your song of ego
will reveal your name.

We hurl every name at you
to change your heart.
We plead for all human rights,
but only the Right you know
is concocted in your rancid stew.
And we will know your name.

In the dark forest of your life,
brag before the fire,
stomp until you split in half
like that evil troll of old.
It will be the vanishing of you.
And we will know your name.

Originally published on I Am Not A Silent Poet

The Girl: Minimum Rage

The girl stands at a train station,
a campaign whistle stop,
the crowd surrounding for the FDR speech,
waves of hope lapping as if they are standing
near a shore.

The President! FDR!
Initials like a rock they throw their arms around
because they were all drowning in 1938,
the weather that day, Depression.
Standing beside him, his sharp-eyed wife.
They say she knows about the girls.
In the night Eleanor feeds his fertile mind,
tells him over and over
about the poor
about a New Deal. 

The girl has a note,
five scrawled words:
“Can you help the girls?”
She knows, not just any girls, 
but the name for the ones who
clean every spot, spill, vomit, shit
that the rich of the world ever make,
who get paid $4 a week
so that the ends don’t even know where to meet.

She lunges forward through the swell of the crowd,
the note stuck out before her, 
waving in her hand above her head.
like fighting to get the attention of the life guard
when you are drowning. 

Close to the shore, a policeman stops her,
shoves her back violently.
As if she were drowning, she shouts: “Help! Help!”
frantic arms waving before she goes under. 

They notice an eddy in the waves.

Eleanor demands, her spouse beckons, 
the policeman relents--
lets the girl through like the sea has parted. 
In a clenched fist,
she shoves the note skyward
toward the caboose.  

Five simple words: 
“Can you help the girls?”
Can you give us decent wages?
I am legion and I make four dollars a week.
Outrageous.

Eleanor and FDR agree.
Twenty-five cents an hour,
triples her weekly, 
changes history forever.

The girl swims back into the crowd,
butterfly strokes as she heads into
the storm of her history,
heard from no more. 

Seattle: Minimum wage: $15.00 now.
Will  be everywhere one day, maybe more.

Praise to the rage of the girl.

Originally published in Quail Bell Magazine

PHONE DAUGHTER


My daughter moved out West,
travels in one of those bands,
the van criss-crossing our country,
leaves dreams like bread crumbs
clawing her way through
brutal, unforgiving woods.
No sight-seeing,
no Grand Canyon, Yellow Stone,
Mammoth Caves, Carlsbad,
but the insides of clubs,
names like racehorses:
Slinky Jim’s,
Nub Buster,
Dark Flamingo,
Carousel.

We visit on the phone a lot,
retired Father and traveling daughter,
music for a soul,
talk for hours, traversing the nation and our lives,
sharing memories and motel info,
what she ate, how did the show go,
how did merch sell?
Will your tour come our way? 

I commiserate with a father,
standing at the edge of his farm
in Missouri
gazing into the horizon
after his daughter and her covered wagon, 
headed West to somewhere, 
husband, beginning brood of kids,  
gear to survive,
no phone, 
and no words. 
 

Originally published in Spindrift

EVE TO THE SERPENT

If you were not so beautiful,
large black eyes
peering down the cleavage of my soul,
tongue fire flicker of lust.

If you didn’t have melting checkerboard skin,
good twisted into evil, clever
able to lie like water quenching thirst,
offer tasty knowledge in a red, round, plump globe.

If you didn’t let me touch,
turn my fingers into loud salve
drowning out the voice in my head:
The warning. The warning. 
If instead you were cuddly,
I could hold you at my bosom
like a Teddy serpent.If you were tiny, shriveled,
not long like a man’s part.
  
Slow too, slithering down the tree like sap,
not slick, shiny-fanged. 

Or even oblong, clunky, some sort of structure
cobbled together by my-yet-to-be-born son.

And hissless, a giraffe voice or ass’s laryngitic bray.

Suppose you were not the Satan.

Then I would have laughed at you
and we would still be in the Garden
not in the burnt out vacant lot
the world is becoming.
 

Originally published in Spindrift

Insecurity

Old, retired now. 
One errand today—extra-large eggs
at the Co-op. 

It is cold outside. 
My car is warm. 
I have a full tank of gas. 

Sometimes, driving, 
I see black wings
flapping between
bare winter branches.

Originally published in Right Hand Pointing

MEMENTOS

Grandmothers, now gone.
One moneyed, one poor.
Both rich in granddaughter.
One gifted a Grandmother-of-Pearl ring,
the other a practical lip balm tin
among other small items.

The daughter turns from the mirror to her mother. 
“I wear the ring all the time.
I use the lip balm once a year, 
on her birthday. 
I hope she knows I want it to last forever.”

Originally published in The Vehicle

 A MOMENT OF SILENCE

Today they called for a moment of silence.
After violence, a moment of silence.
No one ever killed in a moment of silence.
No bombings or shots in a moment of silence.
Hold a moment of silence
For the rest of time. 

Originally published in Gyroscope Review 

Autumn Dread

Autumn the mask of death
I hate those riotous colors

defaces the green leaf
struggles to peek through

shows its disfigured face
knows it will soon be gone

celebrates that dark rainbow
yellow orange red brown

wraps its arcs around
pretends to be summer

an unexpected rainstorm
at the picnic of our lives

blows fiercely into
the icy fingers of winter

grips the season’s throat
doesn’t let go until

every bit of green and sun
warmth choked out

Summer a limp body
our arms can’t hold

Demeter weeps
glares into the distance

Hades steals her daughter again

Published in Spank The Carp

Primary Colors



If you got it right, 
your children are primary colors, 
blue, red, yellow, mine.

You don’t color
the sun blue,
the ocean red,
blood yellow.
That goads, nettles Nature,
angers that Mother. 

They leave and come home, leave and come home.
Blue joys. 
Red hurts.
Yellow needs.
Blue hurts.
Red needs. 
Yellow joys.
Blue needs.
Red joys.
Yellow hurts. 


You set up the canvas before you.
You paint the sun yellow,
the ocean blue,
blood red. 
As you age,
primary.

Published in Imbibe Urbana

Laureate

I suspect no one knows
I am the poet laureate
of my street. 
I declare myself him,
but—who knows!, 
might there be a budding
Frost or Williams or Kooser
on my same block?
( I would never think of one block over.)
Should I call a competition?
Go door to door?
Perhaps put a scroll of poems
in each mailbox, declaring...
Ah, I fear,
an aesthetic instinct,
the time is probably not ripe.
When it is, I will strike. 
I have no fear
just as I have no rhymes,
free verse my thoroughfare.
Beware!

Published in 500 Miles Magazine

Natural Selection

Walking home from school,
one bright, sunny, Spring day,
I saw a worm and bird struggle.
That robin had every right to that worm,
to pull and tug
that wet, pink, elongated body
for her children.
But I didn’t have to like it.
My lunchbox flew,
away flew the robin
without the worm.
I was much younger then.

Published in The Literary Nest

That's What War Does

“I’m so thankful for the atom bombs.”

Who would not take a celestial rag
And wipe away every drop of blood
No matter how patriotic
And wring it out in some far away ocean
That doesn’t exist?

There once was a farm boy
Who loved the sea more than crops.
No girl in tow,
Pearl Harbor enlisted him in the Navy.

They put him on a supply boat,
Delivering materials for beach landings.
At first, nothing much happened.
Just sea storms in a light craft.

Then, in the Philippines,
A Japanese air attack.
“Lost some good men.”
Wished he had prayed with one who died. 

Assigned, finally, to attack Honshu, 
The main island. 
Truman nodded.
The bombs dropped.

Little Boy incinerated 80,000 human beings in Hiroshima in a minute.
Fat Boy incinerated 39,000 human beings in Nagasaki in a minute.
Not counting fauna. 

Understandably,
(You and I were not ordered to attack Japan,
Not asked to sacrifice our own lives).
Years later, he said in the local paper: 
“I’m so thankful for the atom bombs.”

That’s what war does.

Published in Bindweed Magazine