HONK IF YOU LOVE THE LORD

John 3:16 is gaining on me, book,
chapter & verse welded to the bumper
of the Peterbilt burning diesel like
the devil in my rear-view mirror,
this son of a trucker come to set
driver against driver on I-85 near
Greenville, South Carolina, home
of Shoeless Joe and Praise Radio
whose listeners are the lambs of Christ,
say it ain’t so, in a world so loved
by God he gave his only begotten
as I give it more gas because Johnny
3:16 is barreling down, rolling steel
and chrome to kingdom come as if
my car is marked I Brake for Satan,
both of us overtaken by the white
Continental, license GOSPEL DJ,
a speeding preacher singing the news
whosoever followeth him shall not
perish, but shall take the off-ramp
for the Word of God Factory Outlet
where bibles stack halfway to heaven
next to Big Zack’s Discount Fireworks
and the roadside stand that promises
salvation from the traffic and an end
to everlasting thirst and hunger, yes
Hot Boiled Peanuts, Cold Peach Cider!

–from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
Tribute to Lawyer Poets

EXCRUCIATA

You want to look away
from where they lie—
sliced by glass,
battered by flung logs—
children carried from the sea.
You don’t want to be skinned like this,
your wide eyes peeled more open
than they’ve ever been.
But see them.
Small lost princes, heads thrown back
and arms spread so rigidly, the crucified;
see the dark fringe of their beautiful lashes
on these impassive cheeks, no warmer
than the waves that toss them back
to the arms of mothers, fathers
inside out with grief.
See how loss eviscerates.
All night, again, you wander
along the iron gateways, among the purchased
aromas of lust, looking for a certain house
in a strange city. It all has washed away.
Softly, gently the night
opens and closes his wings,
eating and begetting, until the windows
disclose enough dawn
to wake you.

–from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
Tribute to Lawyer Poets

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

I’ve seen them sitting in corridors
on locked units of psych hospitals
where it takes a nurse and two buzzers
to get you in and then back out again.
I’ve walked by them parked in chairs
in hallways—old women sitting alone,
uncombed, unkempt, needing a shave,
talking to someone the rest of us can’t see.

This one I know from sitting next to her in court
last week. I know from reading records
how the people that she knew started getting fuzzy
and fading away along with her mind.
Contacts lost over the years—
one son in prison, the other died a drunk,
a daughter somewhere
maybe in a facility.

She was young once, this woman—
had lovers and babies and friends.
All gone. Except the memories
of the people with whom she still
has unfinished business, to whom she is
explaining slowly, methodically, like an old
argument many times rehearsed, again
what is so important that she tell them.

–from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
Tribute to Lawyer Poets

THE STREET OF THE CELLIST
for Dan

When at last
you find the street of the cellist,
may the dread
that accompanied you
fall by the way,
may the yellow hive
of her window direct you
to the garden
where the russet tint
of alders keep
for all time her three
stone sundials in their shade.
Don’t worry
if the thumbprint
of oil placed
on your forehead trembles
at the pallor of her hair,
in the layered
softness of snow falling
on your shoulders,
in the hum of zero
sounding your arrival,
listen for notes
drawn slow from the tattered
libretto of your life.

–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
Tribute to Nurses

WARD 24
St. Patrick’s Day, 1966

Mental hospitals and snake pits, synonymous,
when I began my career. Stairwells smelled
of Lysol. Patients lay on the dew covered
lawns, their dormitory bedrooms padlocked
all day long to prevent napping. Eight-hundred
milligrams of Thorazine made walking feel
like trudging through deep mud.

Women slept coiled on communal bathroom
floors, guarding handbags, pictures of children,
a fork for a weapon. Hems of hospital-housedresses,
fabric worn thinner than tissues, wiped away
the few tears that managed to escape
this overmedicated state.

Come to my group, my plea, as I knelt offering
filtered cigarettes as free admission tickets.
In empty silence, we sat on single beds, arranged
in a square, in a room as cavernous as an airplane hanger.
What was my hurry, most had lived there twenty years?
Hardly a word dropped into the atmosphere

until St. Patrick’s Day, when I presented
a single green carnation to each woman in the group.
Anna sniffed the blossom; Edna placed it between
her breasts. Rose wore hers over her ear.
Vivian shared a memory about the feel of seeds
in her hands when she gardened. The oldest patient,
Lillian, who had a lobotomy watered
the blossom with her drool.

–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
Tribute to Nurses

WHAT MY PARENTS WANT

At 86 Dad wants a new silver Mercury with heated seats.
Mom wants whatever Dad wants. We’re on the phone,
and I’m scrubbing the kitchen floor with my headset
on, scratching at the black sap marks that stick and
spread before finally letting go. We’re all tired of talking.
So I don’t ask them about moving closer to their kids;
I don’t mention the nurse they fired; I don’t say I think
they’re making a mistake. I breathe hard and tackle
a tough wad of sap. They tell me how cold it is in Las Vegas
in the winter; how the mountains turn purple in their rise
toward the sky. I don’t ask them if they’re eating. I keep
myself from mentioning their many medications. They
want me to love them; they want me to leave them alone.
They want to fumble along the walls of their stucco
house until one falls down, cheek to the cool tile
of the floor, bones so heavy, joints stiff, life blood
thick and unwilling. I hope the other one will lie down too,
pull an afghan over them, the one with squares her mother
made. I hope in the accumulating heat of the desert
they will gasp into each other’s arms and give themselves
away. I hope they can do it without breaking. I hope
they can do it in the clean sweet heat of the day, an open
mouthed entry, the last ripe fruits of breath released.

–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

ASSASSIN

All day we mock what
is beyond our touch
and at the end of the day
I drive thirty miles home
to sleep with a man
who doesn’t deserve
to live his life like a slave.
My children slake their own
thirsts hours away and I
watch videos of their childhood.
Outside, the pansies I have
yet to plant wither in October sun.
I am an American woman,
spoiled as last month’s gravy,
ripe as ground pork in a dumpster,
tethered by plenty,
undone by complacency
vivid as a severed hand.

–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

TO THE DAUGHTER I NEVER HAD

I saw you today at the playground.
You were wearing a little dress
that reminded me of all the dresses

I never bought for you,
all the sundresses and twirly skirts,
all the Hanna Anderssons.

You were on the swing, leaning back,
reaching up with your candy-striped legs,
as if to reinsert yourself

into an imaginary heaven,
into the realm of possibility.
You didn’t see me watching you

from a future in which you don’t exist,
but sometimes you smile at me
from the face of another man’s daughter—

a smile that contains all the mornings
we never baked bread together,
all the cartwheels you never turned,

all the stories you never told me
about all the things that never happened.
You are six, or nine, or fifteen, and always

as beautiful as I imagined, growing up
smart and graceful and strong, and I am glad,
and it breaks my heart

that you have become all this without me.
I have spent what would have been
your entire life breaking up

fights between the boys,
scrubbing the floor around the toilet,
trying to get them to change their underwear,

and knowing that I could not love anyone more—
not even you.
Perhaps someday you will understand

how it’s possible to regret
the life that never was, and still love nothing
more than the life that is.

–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

KNOWN

We can talk about my failure until the cows come home
Meaning, Baby,
It’s a fact
—Like how the health teacher told us about body types
Some girls, she said, will just be heavy
They could diet till the cows come home and still be heifers—
And how she laughed at her own joke
And how the fat girls started to sweat with shame
And I was skinny in that made of sticks way
That comes with being young
And I was skinny, but there were other girls
Who wore their bones like corsets
And fat girls with pretty fat girl faces who would do anything
To feel pretty and not fat
So I laughed—I laughed along
—I let you down,
Did I?
Of course I did—
This is something that you could have read in the leaves
Tea leaves gathered at the bottom of the cup
Leaves gathered in the gutter
Or written in the saliva words
I tongued across your stomach, your thighs, your trusting back
You were shown a thing or two a long while ago
—Remember that day our health teacher
Said those ugly words
And I laughed—
I laughed like the girl I was
And that should have told you something
That right there, should have told you a lot

–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

REUNION
For Cheryl

For as long as I can remember
I’ve been an outsider
a stranger in my own heart
caught between the way it could have been
and the way it was.

You must have sensed me
thinking of you
in the birch trees on the mountain.
Or did you remember me
dreaming out your window
in the rain?

A hummingbird hovers
on the blossoms
of a giant saguaro
feasting on nectar.

You must have found me
thirsting in the desert
huddled under a paloverde.
Or did you hear me
weeping at the grave
beneath a cloudless sky?

When day becomes night
and we are held
in the twilight of not knowing
if it’s dusk or dawn
our dreams become real
in a half-lit room where
shadows chase each
other around the walls.

A pair of white-winged doves
build their nest on the chain link fence
that separates the prison
from the Sonoran Desert.

I hope you will find it better
to love a man
you cannot be with
than be with a man
you cannot love.

–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007