Ouroboros

In the old tales, children
were led away from town to drown
in the river, or into the woods
to be eaten by a witch. Other
witches might cut out your heart,
or a wolf in your grandmother's
babushka serve up her sweetbreads
before downing you as well.

More gruesome still, the modern tale
of the Two Parents Who Turn
into Rat Terriers and, in one version
of the story, slowly disembowel
their young, eating them alive
from inside out, one vital organ
at a time until parent and child
are one at last. Gentler tellings
have them merely worry and gnaw
at one heel until the child is safely
hobbled, picketed, dropping bread
crumbs in a closed circle, head to tail.

Trouble

One driving wheel has come off the toy 
locomotive. The train will no longer 
stay on the tracks. The boy 
has been down on his belly investigating 
the problem and now holds the engine 
and wheel in his hands. I see the wheels 
in his head spinning as he tries to work out 
a way to get things rolling again, e.g. 
the produce to market, logs to the lumber mill, 
grandpa to the city for his visit.  
I see him look from the wheel

to the train to the track, running the route

again and again.  He is old enough to know

there is trouble but still confused 
by the idea of something not easily fixed,

that the locomotive and its complement

of passenger, box, and flat cars will not

soon be humming around the oval again

as if nothing had happened.  He will

eventually ask his mother for help, yes,

but for a while longer I watch him

pressing the little wheel against the axle

over and over, trying to will it to stay,

the expressions on his face familiar, from here,

moving from determination to disbelief,

despair to tears, and at last, resignation.

It’s still like blasting through bedrock, for him,

virgin territory, the steel lines all agleam.

A Good Day's Work

A paper wasp picks at the rotting wood

of the deck post, letting it mix in his mouth

as he flies to the arbor, then spitting out

the fresh paste, piping it onto the underside

of the arch, laying-in lines of hexagonal

cells, his grey Levittown of papier-mâché.

Imagine his lunch break, as he circles

slowly to admire his work, caterpillar

crudités between his mandibles, noting

with satisfaction, this warm June morning,

the breeze that will firm up the nursery

walls and bring again his lovely queen

to purr and hum from room to room.

Come to This

I have forgotten
how to make
my face
look the way
any of you
expect
it to look
when you
tell me
it's good
to see me
or sir
here's your
coffee or
did you hear
Sarah died
sweet Sarah?
and also
all those
Syrians or
Bangladeshis
or even
when you ask
how much
do I love
curry and
by the way
who the hell
do I think
I am?

To the Bite

And then suddenly, all at once it seemed,

the haricot verts were done.  I’m sure I blanched

them.  I remember that much—in a sauce pan

for precisely three and a half minutes, the way

we saw it being done on one of those cooking

shows, remember?  And you said you couldn’t

believe it mattered that much, but we found out

that it does?  I must have kept one eye

on the clock, I suppose, but I think most of me 

spent those two-hundred and ten seconds 

remembering the first meal I cooked for you, 

and how we didn’t even make it through

the first course.  There were black olives,

I think, and bruschetta, which I mispronounced. 

And, look, the beans are bright and green,

so I must have remembered to plunge them still hot

into ice water.  Yes, I’m sure of it, because the cold

reminded me of our, what, third anniversary? 

Fourth?  The one we spent at your parents’ cabin

up north when you persisted in being pissed off

all weekend because there was no reception

for your phone, even after we snowshoed

up the highest hill around?  So back in the pan

with shallots.  Check.  Finely chopped 

and sautéed to translucence.  The beans at last

just al dente, the way we like them, buttered

and salted to taste.  I remember wondering at the time

what call could have been so important. Now,

damn.  After all that, I’ve let them turn cold,

let the small window of their perfection pass by.

To Me

To me

the dead fly

at the center of the plum

is a poem.

To me

from the airplane

mountain ranges replace

themselves like shark teeth.

To me

every child

on the playground

is ringed with roses.

To me

you say you fear

your new lover’s shock

at the hue of your pubic hair.

Weekends Abroad

On Saturday we would cross the street

from her apartment and buy me a white

shirt at Auerbach’s as soon as the doors

opened.  Then down the street to S. H. Kress

for breakfast where grandma sent back

toast until the butter had been properly

spread to every edge, and then muttered

hell in a hand basket for a while after.

That evening I would lie on the carpet

of her one room and eat Brach’s candy

out of the bag while we watched Lawrence

Welk.  They have a colored man who dances

like nobody’s business, she told me every time.

Just before a bedtime that was early

even for me, we went next door to visit

the Barlows, some old people from England

who always gave me shiny silver dollars,

which felt foreign and heavy in my hand.

Sunday we took the bus to the Baptist

church up on the hill, grandma in her hat

and me in my new shirt.  I watched

the preacher who popped out of a window

up on a high wall and dipped some kid

in the water, and I always worried grandma

would haul me up there by the ear one day

trying to undo all the evil my parents had done

by me, but she never did.  Back in the city

as we waited for them to pick me up, she put

five maple toffees in my front pocket

to take home, telling me, now remember what God

thinks of those who won’t share their good fortune. 

Miriam's House

Miriam sat on her rock behind her house.

It was late evening, and grey snow 
was falling.  She had put on her navy wool

coat and matching knit cap with earflaps

and also matching blue mittens, but was still

cold.  The wind, she would have said,

brought tears to her eyes, and she felt them

freeze on her face.   She should eat something

to settle her stomach, she thought. 

She knew how to make scrambled eggs

and buttered toast and tea.  She felt the house

leaning over her and knew she would have to

go in again.  First, though, she would work out

what to do. People said she was clever

for her age. The wind crept down her neck

and up her thick socks, and then it was still

enough to hear someone's car pulling away.

When she felt that she might become stone

herself if she stayed out any longer, the snow

pooling against her boots, she bit her lip until

it bled and her eyes blurred, and then stood.

Aeolian Biome

There’s the solar variety that arrives

scattering particles brilliant enough

to escape the sun and then ribbon

around the northern latitudes in neon

green.  And then there are the winds

of change, the ill wind, the zephyr

chinook brickfielder kaver mistral

sirocco willy-willy nor’easter diablo.

We ride it, twist or scatter in it,

break it, have it in or knocked out

of our sails, or we may be three sheets

to it.  We throw caution to but spit

away from it.  And we hope for a second one.

Sitting now in the heavy sea breeze,

the morning mist has so blinded me

I can only hear the waves.  I remember you

always began your walks on the beach

going with the wind, so as not to know

you’d gone too far until halfway back.

We wait for it all—pollen, a change of luck,

summer—to come in on the wind,

and we feel it rattle in the leaves and through

our fingers as it goes, taking everything

back.  They say our last breath is a sigh.

Garbage

The greyhound has been in the garbage again.

The smell is the first thing I’m aware of

this morning and provides an appropriate

segue from the dream I just left

in which I was following to the letter

your instructions for party propriety—

stand up straight, look people in the eye

as you shake their hand firmly

and enunciate, hello, how are you?—

but I didn’t like what I saw in their eyes,

a kind of really? as they assessed me

skulking about in the umbra of you.

I can hear the granola hitting your bowl

with added pique.  But you were the one

who thought a dog might be fun.