NaPoMo#27

Incunabula
He sleeps and I feel finally twinned.
Every morning since the night
we were born, stillness awakened
him first to find us remade children
swaddled in each other’s sheets.
Today his eyes slowly crack open
and brighten the sun just so,
sifting puffs of air into my mouth
as I chant, “I woke up before you!”
He answers, “Yes?” in that patient
parent-lover tone, not [...]

NaPoMo#26

My Favorite Scarf
Sisterly love knitted it from magenta wool,
strung just the needed amount of orange
through cables and flat-hemmed points.
It’s much like the pink vest always paired
with a skirt in kindergarten, with swirled
horn buttons and same-yarn whipstitching.
There were blue and green gloves too,
checkerboard patterned–belonging to
one of my sisters–and the old wooden
footstool George made our mother one [...]

NaPoMo#25

 
unpaid vacation   
 
haven’t left the apartment, not in two days 
but the world hasn’t missed me at all 
neither the smiling clerk at the 7-11 
nor eye-rolling bagger at the Shaw’s 
not the morning-wishing Metro vendor 
 
gas and electric bills nestle patiently 
in their no-nonsense blue and white 
envelopes, completely unconcerned
though the mailman rang the bell like crazy
as if my neglect were a personal [...]

NaPoMo#24

My Sister Believes 
This poem was deleted for publication purposes.  That means you can read it if you buy my book in the fall.

NaPoMo23

First, Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday!!
23 My Civic Duty

The old building was rather nicer, cadet-blue trimming
the dusty fleur-de-lis high on freshly off-whitened walls,
the flag a scrub-faced inspiration by the unplugged television,
still bubble-wrapped and cellophaned, rolled to face the left.
Here, three years later, my leg falls asleep at 9:40
with no friendly biologist “slash sculptor” to distract me
from [...]

NaPoMo#22

#21 Removed
my first love
phones ringing make me think of towers
and float back to Rockport in 1987,
where I swerved in a yellow gauze sundress,
sandals slung over shoulders, and danced
across the sand as Warren watched, smiling silent,
his “tutti-fruity” eyes leaping across the beach,
then he lead us to the lighthouse to be seen
by a woman with a distemperate [...]

NaPoMo #20

20 The Happy Hour
 
For an hour each night, the children bathed
and bedded down with stuffed bunnies and Pooh,
she lay white-nightied in the chirping dark to wonder
if her husband were alive, whiskey-soured and darting,
or in the literal gutter instead, with motorcycled men lit blue
in flashes attempting to identify grey matter, teeth, bone, glasses,
splattered, shattered, sharding the [...]

NaPoMo#19

19 “Warning: Recruitment Zone Ahead”
Have you lost interest…?  Has the charm of wind
running its fingers through your hair as you fly
over the Charles River on the Harley of a truly
beautiful man lost its Umph!? And the sailboats,
matching their crisp canvas shapes to the cloud-
dodging peak of the Bunker Hill Bridge as rays
of late April smile [...]

NaPoMo#18

removed for publication

Happy National Poetry Month!

In honor of NaPoMo, I have accepted the challenge of on-line poet friends to write a poem every day for the entire month of April.  I will only slog to the keyboard to type every now and again, being one of those old fogies who still uses ink first.  Write on, people! 
NAPOMO-2008, POEMS 1-17
1 Bean Counter

As [...]