Settling for Apathetic


The girls have mastered the pitiful look, 
pouting on cue with lips the perfect 
shade of cherry. The boys in the hall rub 

hands over hair stubble and pull 
at their trousers, never getting 
them as high as they should be. Today 

the kid in the back row forgot to do 
his assignment again and thinks I’ll 
forgive him. The principal has remembered 

my name for the second time this week. Today 
the band tunes up in the background, 
and cafeteria ladies grunt and mumble.  

Everywhere ventilators hiss and clank, 
bubblers gurgle slowly, water swimming 
around phlegm and spent gum.  

The spell check wants to change phlegm 
to philosophy and while I consider this,
a kid in first seat sleeps and I settle for apathetic.





Notice


Two mallards land atop a roof
on a blustery, brisk April day,
a day perfect for ducks on the lam, 
maybe, on their way home 
after their southern sojourn. 
I don’t know what they’re looking for, 
some 20 feet up, but the female 
sidesteps the shingles and fluffs; 
the male’s head rocks and bobbles, 
shines like oily emeralds.  Surely 
there are puddles to wade into, 
ponds to paddle, yet here they are.
They should be warned.  
There are bird dogs lurking, 
including mine, who’d love to sidle up 
and grab a sniff or two, grab a taste 
of feathers and bone. There is a hawk 
who owns these trees, wires 
and rooftops. He usually 
gets what he wants.  





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, 
and cut berry-box into tables and chairs.
We 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 shaboom, shaboom 
and danced in paper sandals, our realm 
compromised 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.





Tempting Mystery


How can I show this child the way 
to write about war?  She’s never seen 
more than what’s been shown on tv: 

the blown footage, the bodiless flags, 
iridescent missiles arcing in some foreign 
night, while bullets whistle

across a thirty-six inch screen.  
She’s never tasted sand, acrid with smoke,
touched mud studded with bones,

or seen blood blacken as it dries.  
She’s never known the smell of a corpse 
or how it fills her mouth with vomit.  

Still she understands the big picture, 
the waste and suffering, burnt 
offerings to political gods.     

To her, death is a tempting mystery, 
so how can I tell her what loss means?
She must imagine war as more 

than just busted buildings on yellowed paper,
more than six o’clock sound bites.
She must hunt for the wounded, 

seek the man with no eyes, the woman 
with a hole in her heart, 
the boy too dumbed to speak.




​
Swarm


All day they arrive again 
and again bees to bloom 
in this quiet heat I throw 
pebbles of silver 
into cupped hands where 
they come in swarms 
to drink what I give them  
today the bitter singing 
the persistent wings
the memorial ache
wires hovering with
song, the elegant song.