Evening Soap

 

She wasn't even pregnant when she bore

Her brother's child (step-only, thus genteel).
What she had concealed, though, never was made clear.
She named him Topsy, he the ickle heir
To Gallantyme, the biggest ranch around.
(They hired their own weatherman and sent
Over to Ft. Lupino for their boots.)
Paterfamilias, he pitched a fit
And sent her out into a thunderstorm,
Where Little Escobar saved her and hers
And made them warm in simple peasant ways.
It took three days to track them to his hut.
Never was quite the same, some people said,
What with his herky-jerky gait. Not once
Did she look at PF. He took to drink
And fisticuffs. And that was the premiere.

Far From Lucky Fer

 

Lately, she said, I have been anywhere

But home. It has a name like Lucky Fer

Or Dottle on the Wold. I can’t recall.

Under the placard of the Wain & Wheel

I dropped a stitch; since, nothing’s been the same.

Except the weather. Only goats and old

Couples, planning their schedule of buffets,

Talk weather. I’ve not been home in a while,

There, where the ogres show off photographs

Of me in rompers, me in maryjanes,

Me at the top of Mt. St. My Backyard.

Fools and hearses live there. At my day school

The smartest girls are crying loudest. Roughs

Trade your pocket change for their oaths and blows.

Chickens display their legs; the best boys beat

Time with them. Down, they holler. Sweet, get down.

Bastard’s the town for me, a red-brown mess

Of clay and jalapeños. I have changed

My name for numbers. I am 26

This week. Next time it may be more or less,

The number of my blessings on the road.

Damme & Blast, still working on my wheels,

I won’t shove off tonight. Texas must wait.

Nightlife is like a punishment. I’ll sleep,

She says a bunch. Under the swinging sign

of Fills-A-Lot, she asked for regular

And washroom. She said, Knowing when you need

New belts and filters, all your fluids topped,

Is like a transplant: life beats in me yet.

She was on foot and headed to the east.

I been there, she said. I been everywhere.

And if you’ll cash my check, I will be gone.

Family Matters

What do you say to Ishmael,

The spurned child, the second best—

Sorry, lad, but your mom was just

A handmaiden, a tweeny like,

And Sarah was godawful pissed?

Father a race, why don't you? That

Would show him, Father of his kind.

They made it to Vienna, but

It's couches there, not ottomans.

One each. Don't pus. And Isaac, he

Got to be a major moral bit:

The proof of how you love someone

Is where you'll put the knife when told.

That ram was someone's Ishmael,

A woolly spot of sacrifice.

How many times did Isaac ask

His dad to have a catch, you think?

When cards arrived for Ishmael—

Birthday, Christmas, 4th of July—

Mom tore them up and threw them out.

Ishmael gathered up the bits.

Under Groby Great-Tree

 

This appeared in Iambs & Trochees.

This is the anodyne. It dogs
The hand that bit you. Reigning frogs
fall upwards, then, and abdicate.
This is the awkward watch, the late
piecemeal of time your father handed
off, before the day demanded
help, before the poison took.
Listen. Babbles. On Groby Brook
the paper boats all have departed:
sodden, sank, too heavy hearted
to arrive. The guests have begun
to wander off, and one by one
they seek release in solitude,
but not in love, nor meat, nor crude
imaginings of quick relief.
There is no pain beyond belief.
In Groby House, on unmade beds,
the servants set down weary heads,
and slowly the predicted dark
begins to cover Groby Park.

French 102

 

La plume de ma taunt,

In epigrams, is what I want.

Regime Change

 

Grandmothers throw themselves into the street,
Caterwauling, burning their ancient caches
Of diaries and grosgrain lingerie.
No more to hope for, now that loss has come,
Unpacked in the great room, fixed itself a snack,
And cut the landline. Tell the tailor no:
Alteration belongs to yesterday.

The authorized watchers do not want to watch.
Where younger pain explodes, this just hangs on,
Nor all that long. The actuarials
Identify themselves and confiscate
Running shoes of the stationary kind,
The keening widows and the flattened fraus
Not vigorous enough for knitted sleeves.
The grandmothers grow smaller, they retreat,
Much larger women on their wedding days.
Their children now have dewlaps. Here come vans
As big as percherons. The women grip
Their sorrow and will not be dragged away.
By morning they will be a little field
Of husk and hull, a compost now assoiled.

Hit or Myth

 

He flew it higher than you might have thought,

Beyond the reach of Sense or Cymbeline,

Headed for higher office, like the Earl

Of Eyrie or the Alderman of All.

Beyond reproach he flew it, though unmanned,

And woman, too, if only she would listen,

However first impressionable that.

I can't make headway here. A ducal debt

Is nomenclatural and nothing more,

And yet he flew it higher than you thought

He could, a prince among the aspirants.

Fate and fatuity are oh so close,

Wax wings and a ball of twine at either end.