Brilliant


All I can think of are his eyes, brilliant blue he says and I can’t remember when I’ve ever seen eyes like that except maybe on Paul Newman who I saw twice—stumping for McCarthy once in La Crosse when I was too young to vote even though my boyfriend and brother had enlisted and there were Gene and Paul on a dais and I was standing in front of St. Joseph the Workman Cathedral with a cigarette and a really bad attitude thinking how Nixon would screw things up. Later I saw Paul at the race track at Elkhart Lake when I was 32 and wore a pink tube top and short shorts and he was in his trailer with Joanne, at least I imagined he was there with her and the racing Mazdas, his blue racing suit hanging nearby, when she made his evening martini and some pasta with a good sauce or maybe a burger on the grill.  My friends and I were sitting on lawn chairs swilling beer when he walked out of the trailer, a big one with fancy letters and strode purposefully between our two campers and Jill and I almost came out of our Dr. Scholl’s (mine were blue) amazed and staring and we both nodded when we saw the color of his eyes.  Omygod, did you see that? they’re so blue I think I said--brilliant—and she nodded and I knew at once it had to be love.

-first published in Pencil Test, Cassandra Press 2002



Perfect Two


The cool basement lured us like a breeze, 
a chilly refuge where Loretta and I played 
with teenage dolls, made houses of cardboard.
We cut berry-boxes into tables and chairs,
named our boyfriends
David and Rick, imagined 
they looked like Roy Rogers
and rode smart horses that reared 
up on two legs, took us for wild rides.
We were the wax-lipped ladies,
darlings of the damp, linoleum-rose 
angels, while outside cicadas hummed 
summer-summer and mayflies brought 
luck to the pickup games.  
Inside we sang My Girl 
and swayed in paper sandals, our realm 
invaded only when my brother 
and his stupid friends tried to chase us— 
or by my mother, who brought us Popsicles, 
frosted and sweating, split in perfect twos.

-first published in Catch and Release



Whistling Mother


My mother whistles under her breath, 
all day, all the time.  Not the sweet 
song birds make but a toothy melody, 
a skipped record, her lips pursed to a point.
She does this leaning over the sink 
to peel potatoes, spooning coffee 
into the basket, clearing the table.  
She whistles in the car when she’s not 
sighing or sorting through tissues and bottles 
full of pills. She does it while watching TV, 
paging through magazines,
maybe even while she sleeps. 
The tune is always the same, al dente 
half song, a few notes rising and falling.  
I wonder how my father can stand it.
Maybe he’s just tuned her out, 
after all those years of chucking nickels 
into the jukebox of her mouth. 
My own daughter tells me I do 
the same thing, and I admit it, catch 
myself sometimes--lips puckered, teeth 
set, the air adjusting its wings, hoping the birds 
are waiting, their ears cocked just so.

-first published in  North Coast Review: Summer 1999



Weather Girl


I thought I saw my mother 
on television, her hair 
cut in a swingy pageboy, 
mouth chiseled with dark lipstick.  
She was manicured and pointing, 
hands sweeping across a map 
of the Midwest, isobars 
clinging to the back of her arms 
like spider webs.  She’d just quit 
her stint as housewife, shrugged off 
forty years as martyr and ended 
her long term relationship 
with dust and elbow macaroni.
Stunned, I tried to change the channel,
to relentless morning 
news or a clearance sale on Egyptian 
jewelry, watch an infomercial 
hawking salvation through better skin.
But I kept coming back, surprised 
to see how satisfied she was, 
how well she controlled someone 
else’s day, pleased to advise 
people in Tomah to wear their raincoats, 
adding that those in La Crosse could 
leave their umbrellas at home. 

-first published in Pencil Test, Cassandra Press, 2002



Fishing


You cast a line into a weed bed
while I see your shoulders twitch, 
the small muscles in your forearms 
shiver as you guide the lure 
to water and the line settles 
in front of you—a string of sunlight,  
a game of blind man’s bluff. 
The bass ignore the lure as they move 
like small torpedoes through 
stems and reeds and coontail ruffles.  
You wind and pull, wind and pull 
while overhead hopeful gulls eye 
the action. This time you haul up short 
and cast again. Nearby dragonflies 
stitch lilies to the water’s cloth,
the shimmer of their wings a silver filigree.  
You push the boat deeper into the muck 
and cast again and this time, whomp! 
the fish is fooled and hooked, 
pin-wheeling in and out of the slop, 
incensed,
and you jerk and you jerk, 
finessing it nearly to the boat.  
The gulls squawk hosannas,
the dragonflies stop their constant darning 
and the fish shakes its furious 
green head and flies off, free,
wiser for its sore mouth,
its eyes staring into the blue
wall of sky.

-first published in Ibbetson Street #21