pearls

Doris saw her

wearing pearls

on the 5 o’clock news

and thought,

 she isn’t as pretty as my girl;

and so bought me a strand

with her charg-a-plate.

the old suitcase

peculiar thing,

the suitcase in my vestibule

picked up for five at a sale.

crocodile embossed-

dull’d brass hardware and

faded Samsonite label.

it opens to a puckered lining

and grosgrain ribbons,

hidden pockets.

in its spot, it is chockfull

of memories: letters tidily

batched and tied.

in old movies, it sits on settees

as silky unmentionables are

folded in slippery piles.

only to be turned topsy turvy

when pulled up by its handle

to move toward a destination.

peculiar thing- this suitcase.

seemingly structured,

yet rather a jumble,

when destination is gotten to

and right sided,

contents have shifted.

you seem to like me

you seem to like me-           

            even love.

I see it in your eyes,

            crinkling up

when you smile at me

            most times.

but then you are silent.           

where do you put it away

            I wonder.

I find it in my finger nail

            clippings,

wrapped 'round my hair

            that’s knotted.

my DNA is encoded with it.

the children will come in fast

            and furious.

their love bubbles out of them

            in torrents.

it’s raucous and undeniably

            true.

what happens to that liberty.

I want to give that to you-

            license.

your silence can sit on my

            window sill,

find solace in time spent in

            yourself-

not caught up in others’ pith and fury.

it’s hard to say what I want-

            simply.

it hasn’t taken form, though contentedly

            steadfast,

not unlike a child’s seamless love,

            I expect,

you are all I need to finally soar.

pork chops at the Majorette

breakfast was served all day

at the Majorette.

patrons from the neighboring

residential hotel

would wander in off of

Oak Park Avenue

to  push runny eggs

around a plate with

a day-old coffee chaser,

but Doris always

ordered pork chops.

pork chops that would

move all day to next,

as the knives couldn’t

butter toast,

and her dentures snapped

at each grizzly bite.

but she loved ‘em-

or at least the time

it took to polish her plate.

neighbor to many

who lined up along the counter,

she’d wait for me in a booth-

our once a week luncheon date.

she’d have her hair washed and set

and wear the fur

she bought on her charg-a-plate

at Marshall Field’s.

she’d often repeat her past

to weave stories that

she no longer lived

in her one room corner

with the yellowing curtains

and iron bedstead.

I never counted the number

that the waitress filled my cup,

I’d always leave her twenty,

‘cause god knows that the

residents of the Berwyn Hotel

were the last of the nickel tip.

Doris would be there every morning

at five for oatmeal and juice.

and if I wasn’t coming,

she’d have softer fair to chew

at noon. at the Majorette.

unforgotten/frost

 unforgetting

        stumbling out of hibernation,
tripping over forgotten trenches,
pawing earth and grazing sustenance-
feeling slowly beats through
the heart's anesthetized state.
        sleepy squints brush at the rise in light
filtering through winter's peel-
the periphery a golden crown,
its warmth shocking
each fossilized corpuscle.
        my heart is begrudgingly resuscitated,
its memory impossible to delete,
the source resurrecting the impulses
unaware of what is harder to revive
than surviving what was
the cause of its initial incarceration.

In college, I fell for a boy. We two instantly connected to each other’s hearts. But like many boys in college, he found another connection. One that I could not be for him. It was slow coming, and painful for him to realize. I lived in a cloud of hopefulness and held fast to the love that we felt for each other, and the commitment that we made. Having given up all hope too many years in, he came to me … wanted me. I said yes. I felt like the bear in the cave coming out after a long winter of hibernation. But I came out … because he was stamped on my heart.

It didn’t take long though … January to August … until he realized that he feared the leap of faith. Characteristically, we were far away from home on a craggy cliff in the north of Ireland when he told me. And so heartbroken, I turned around, lived another week brutally disappointed, possibly shamed, and moved back to the cave that protected me from the icy chill and into the stale air that life without him left me. 

frost

       stumbling toward hibernation,
pawing familiar tracks in darkness;
first frost, petal snow
whisper in the arctic air.
       sadly, autumn's sleepy squint
neglects to reveal the inevitable-
that ice storms again to freeze
anything that may have held life.
       I retreat into you
though suffocating in the stale air
trapped since my last sleep.

I think of that boy now. He is dead. He did come to me again … just a couple of years ago. We got lost in us. I was in it for … a lark, but for him … he seemed to hold tighter. I said, ‘what is it that you want from me?’ A question that I had never been able to ask before that moment. And when he said, ‘everything,’ I didn’t have that to give to him. 

I’m not a bear. I have to live all of the months out in the world, unhidden-unforgotten.

dandelion wine

in the yard at noon
the teetotaler stoops
to pick the weed that
happily populates
hot summer lawns.
careful to rinse
the yellow blades
of dirt and bug,
setting to soak
next to the jars
and pots bubbling up
ripened Michigan fruits.
dandelion wine
batched and aged,
the bitter bloom
fairy kissed- sweetens-
in the dry
of a cold cellar.
in a few months time,
never in her cups herself,
she pours them for her boys
'round the table,
the last of summer's tonic.

island girl

I stuck a sandwich in her mouth.

she swam every wave

that crashed against

the shore of Lake Michigan

that sizzling summer day.

gulping the turkey down,

happy to replace some of the

calorie lost in the movement

of water and sand,

she turned an eye to

the continued maelstrom

that was the day’s condition.

‘the waves are calling me,’

she whispered to it,

not me who was insistent

that she stay 15 more minutes

on the towel to settle the

slug of food and drink,

but the lake entranced her

and called her home-

island girl that she is.

standing, her little suit stretched

tight across an Irish derriere,

her Puerto Rican stamp,

sun darkened, nut-brown.

‘the waves are calling me.’

fearless, not afraid to call back

the tide whether in the darkness

of the North Atlantic or

crystal blue light of the Caribbean,

she walked into it with conviction,

her sweater, her skin, marked

with both tribes that let

it be perfectly known that

the sea, the water, could not drag her under.

‘the waves are calling me,’

and she pulled me up from the sands

to ride across and through any danger

she sensed. island girl:

as happy on land as in the sea.

selke, her seal coat water resistant

and protective of current and drag.

the waves call her, home.