Summer Baking


wasn’t what you were thinking--
a pie crust, cut with Crisco, salt
and flour, filled with glazed berries.
Or sweet lavender sables
melting cool on your tongue. 
I mean pale winter skin 
slathered in baby oil tinted
with iodine, zinc oxide on your nose. 
The smell of Coppertone
takes me back to 1965,
to mud-bottomed lakes and me
floating on a raft of water and air,
and baking in summer's sugar sand--
resigned to tan, except
for the small heart taped
to my thigh—pulsing white and fearless.  





Spring in Wisconsin

 
Wasn’t the robin
the harbinger of spring,
that red-breasted
strutter who shows up
on fruit trees gulping those
small apples now turned
to raisin and wine?
Spring’s least praised herald
should be the housefly I saw
staggering and stupid
on my deck rail,
its bottle green eyes
looking for a mate
to huddle with before
disappearing into
the next cloud of snow.





Charles Harper Webb
confirmed you as a friend on Facebook


Was there ever a brighter start
to the day, to be newly
“friended” by a famous poet? 
He knows nothing of you,
how your thumbs split
every winter, how snow collects
on your patio table like a giant cake.
O, Charles Harper Webb,
was there a time when poetry
wasn’t your best pal, when your lines
weren’t like mine, neither funny
nor wise? Of course, there’s a rocker
in your blood, and a shrink, too–
Freud and Springsteen
and you, amigos del corazón. 
You make it seem so easy, but 
I want to know, do your fingers
clench into fists like mine,
tiny charlie horses when you write?
Is there a name for your beard,
how it outlines your chin, falls
in scallops like drapery swags?
O, Charles Harper Webb,
one of the three-name poets
like William Butler Yeats
or Rainer Maria Rilke, I’m glad
we are friends. One day, maybe
I can poke the soul patch under your lip,
tickle your timeline. I have
so many questions to ask. Please
don’t unfriend me.





Advice from the Spider


was to walk carefully. It’s easy
to trip over all those feet. Throw
your draglines with care,
or you’ll end up attached
somewhere you don’t want to be. 
Wind is your enemy. 
Hunker under a branch,
hide beneath a shingle, a slat.
Twist yourself into a cocoon
of silk while you wait
to spin   fling   spin.
Know that some will fear you. 
Your many legs,
those sticky brushes. 
Some will fear your eyes
looking eight ways at once.
Some will admire you,
carry you outside to safety,
some will watch while you
spin    chew    spin.
Some are ready to fold you
into a tissue, pinch your small body
flat and toss you into the toilet.
They’ve forgotten the egg sacks
hidden in corners and shoes.





Small Ode to Sen-Sen


O black sweetness,
how sickening
and awful
you are
mysterious licorice
mint made perfume
red factory packets
meant to shake
shake and tap
dispense one
tiny square
at a time
fingers tipped
with morsels
which take my
breath away.