Leave some flour and shortening about,
she’ll bake a pie—and teach you too,
with black raspberries—wild—seedy—delicious.

She stirs their juice—color like no other—
not raspberry, not blackberry—but black raspberry.
She comprehends the subtle distinctions of our preferences,
because she knows and enjoys her own.

Frugal but never spartan, economic but never flint-skinned,
a great recycler, marveling at the waste of others.
spoiling the future of anthropology,  reallocating detritus.

A piece of muslin is puzzled into window shades,
with pulleys that you explain,
her mind, part engineer, perceives mechanics.

A worker carving sense in a wilderness,
she cuts brush to get at the fig tree.

She’s practiced and practical—ends her day early—
tired from her unyielding tasks;
a child holding up a scraped clean dinner plate—
or a bowl molded by thumb from mashed bread and glue
“Look what I made,” she beams.  “Aren’t I great?”

Often she rubs her luck at riddles or games of chance,
thinking it is skill,
as she gloats over one more hoard of champion chess.

She’s a moth of social enterprise
organizing a dance, a drama, an odd time dinner.
If you ask, she’ll serve picnics in winter, fireballs in hot July.

Always game for ripe adventure,
she’ll calibrate jello convinced she’s a judge of wiggle,
she’ll troll the bawdy horseshoe crab
the licentious cuckoo, the musky bug in heat.

She’ll pot herbs for twenty–paper-whites or amaryllis,
knead gnocchi, bake bread, boil rice, roast pork,
snip basil for salad, mash mint for tea.
and doesn’t bat at testing leftovers on any passing Queen.

For her cloth is homespun not brocade,
impolite but thoroughly woven,
and she asks only that her whites to be white.
her yellows to be sun,
her orange to be sun kissed,

If you’re sick in gut or spirit she’ll come carry you,
whisk you home to soup and waffles,
cool your brow ‘til the fever passes,
throw rocks to get you out of bed.

She’s plucky in her humor, full of piss and nettle,
always forgetting her small bundle of tact outside your door.
She’ll put two thumbs up in any extravaganza
snort and sniff as she hollers “Gawd it’s awful!”

She likes fact.  Studies problems:
changing wine to water in a thirsty desert?
Like Blake she’s seen the marriage of heaven and hell.
and cranky in the afternoon, her voice swears–
at injustice, the millionaires who line her block, the men who never listen.

Offer her words on paper—she edits text, endorses—improves.
Her keen appraising eye lays to her work
But never lies.

She spits on both sides of the Janus-faced,
whether tycoons tied to their tobacco fortunes,
or imperious codgers untethering their seatbelts.

She disarms the indirect, ignores callous acknowledgements,
and won’t cavort with toads.
For she’s no coward,
and would rather give than take it on the chin.

When she is injured she retreats like a beagle under a Denver porch.
licking her freckled wounds, all-knowing,  smartly self-contained.
But she can endure entrapment for only a short spell—
Just let a car pass bound for California!—and out she leaps ears flapping,

“Take me with you!  Take me!
Tail wagging.  I want to go everywhere with you and you and you and you. . .
everywhere and everywhere forever . . .
I want to follow fun.”

Communing on a commune would suit her fine,
but some overestimate her need to include.
One fine day, watch her when the pack is running off the cliff
hurling their bodies into the sea,
she’ll run along — but stop on a dime,
peer at the surf and pounding rock below;
watch the bodies twist with disgust.
Suddenly her common sense and honor burns,
she’ll turn and leave the chase, slowly walk home alone,
keeping her own counsel.

The next time the lemming gang goes on a tear,
She might race,
but usually she’ll withdraw for keeps and refuse to budge,
Wistfully she’ll bake scones instead.
“I don’t see their point,
I guess I’m always out of fashion.”

But it is the plainness of these actions that sets her apart
and her embrace of us makes life worth living .
She is our resilient friend
Rose of Sharon.
In her bloom we count ourselves lucky.
She is magnificent.
She is magnificent.

Ode to Rose of Sharon is a tribute to a friend upon her 80th birthday.

Chapter I

A package arrives!

Chapter II

Kennedy offed a republic
Unfurls what the russians
R’ waitin’ for
Oh! Virgin Land Loretta Porter Patsy
She weeps in
Her homesick coffee
He wrecks the car (again)

Chapter V

A legitimate English
Speaker can you ape a story
Ye citizens who speak
In a different way
Circumstance can enhance or eclipse nuance

Chapter V (Part Two)

A Father’s lesson:  What?
A boy
Your age don’t know how
(Whiskey)
To tie his shoes
I’ll teach ya’
God-damn it
The tiresomeness of another’s life

Chapter VII

Miss Birmingham’s class:
YOU
are
A good reader
A good
reader?
Green Eggs Green Eggs Green Eggs Purple Cray
Ons Cray
Ons Sounder Alfred Hitch
Cock Three Investigators—-huh?
Cock?
Heh-Heh
Mad Magazine
Mad Magazine
Mad Magazine

Chapter IIXI

A Mother’s Narrative Falls To Question:  Vy?
Vy Vy Vy
Vy did I ever…
Narrative questions question narrative
Vy did Jackie
Dat Greek…  She hat every ting
A vidow should vant
The more popular you are
more vulnerable to homesickness & criticism

Chapter X

Part of what gives power its power
Is a complexity of attitude
Great Uncle Joe
visits
Look at that colored
Man
White girl &
Soon the whole country’ll
Be mulatto

BOOK TWO

A certain surrealism
Wears thin
Juxtaposition is most effective
When it seems earned
Another car job fifth blend ordinary
And extraordinary
Everyday and metaphysical

Chapter XII

Who’m I What’m I
Doing here
All stories are somehow survival stories
N-n-now Merry C.
N-not gonna be stuck
See…A hole life…si…
Krummy Building n’ Loan.
Parody: (i.e. see Mad Magazine.)

Chapter XIV

The measure of my power:  Wrong to describe this
River journey in
High-falutin’ language.  Huck thinks
On the page
His focalization not steady
Over entire narrative
Try eye-dialect
An intentional use
Of misspellings to convey characters
intellect education lack of

Chapter XVI

(A race to dénouement)
I’m leaving
Adolescence–its long negotiation
Self-dramatized
Characters observe & opine
Always influence a narrator’s voice
“I took a risk once.  Shit.”

Chapter XVI – (part 2)

I see:
Orality of language has connection
To the art and if you ever hit me
Again You’ll find my pen
Inside your heart

Chapter XVI – (part 3)

A bully backs down:
(Don’t believe in objectivity; everything’s personal)
Go to god-damn hell
Don’t expect
I know what goes on
Wasn’t born yesterday
Been around
If it hadn’t been for you
If it hadn’t been for you
If it hadn’t been for you!

End of Book Two:
Determination sans Resource

The train
A Chaucer’s journey crossing the past
From the address book
Three hundred &
Seventeen dollars—stolen!
(Endure disappointments about yourself)
Fellow passengers Joad Gant Sister Carrie Karenina Kerouac Newman, A.E. Alger Little Eva & Angel back from Brazil & Anna
Back from Siam crowd
Similar narratives
But somehow
THEY END
different

Bound Out was published in Barrow Street

He took her into his view of the city
at twenty-three, lustful and blind besides,
tasting love, cutting keys, her beloved.

Marriage, so deep it gripped his hot insides.
A couple, now one, forever their city,
one home, one lease, one love, his beloved.

But time partitioned love, and now no longer young,
she stole east and he went west,
two sides, their beloved city in between.

Published in the PEN Handbook for Writers in Prison

Love burns:
a vile carbolic
flung in her brow-plucked face already green.

Love burns:
the girl I saw in Brooklyn at the center
of Flatbush and DeKalb
swinging at her lover’s Porsche
Saying “Ah kill you.”
“Ah kill you a million times.”

Red Light was published in LIT magazine

And in rich Alexandria, or by the Bosphorescent waters of Constantinople, back from the silk route, the salt road, the spice trade — we had to walk in shadows — cross under the archways — and sometimes, yes sometimes, there were blessings along the way as in the dim lamplight we met our young selves, alive with youth and possibility — traded carnal favors — pleased and sometimes paid — to wander back home well spent — glad we’d left our warm beds to attend the theater.

Now, we stay in with our darkened dreams — our faces lit by the blue glow of perfection — clicking out notes to one another — mysterious, hidden liars, hoping but for a surprise — that one of us will make the first move and come for the other.

A Quorum of One was published in Sleeping Fish