August 2024
Bio Note: My writing appears in 49 literary reviews. and my two books of poems, Lyrical Years (2023, Kelsay) and What I Meant to Say Was... (2023 Impspired) and graphic memoir My Life in Fish: One Scientist’s Journey (2023, Impspired) are all available on Amazon.
Sprouting Onions in the Kitchen
Who among us hasn’t received the
overdue notice from the last two
yellow onions in the five pound bag;
now spouting Vesuvial green
eruptions from the kitchen hanging
basket and chanting “some days,
enough is just too much.”
Who among us hasn’t worn the papery
skin of regret at words unsaid, actions
unbegun? The “love yous” and hugs that now
float down-river, caught perhaps in remnants
of a green mesh plastic sack, like the one
now holding these two flaccid onions.
Who among us hasn’t named regret—
brother, sister, or first cousin, though
tomorrow, and all days thereafter,
are a kitchen counter wiped clean:
a floor just swept.
Trauma
Like the thirty-eight dollar rondels at
Le Fromage Vert, Mom had a double-cream
illness—a paste of depression, tightly
waxed with a rind of mania. Discovering
her after the second attempt left my psyche
in a decade-long twerk. But now, fifty-four years
later, what remains are blurry home videos
of her form in a sheer aqua nightgown lying
in puke and diarrhea—as if shot from the last
car of the speeding train of memory.
My wife says I’m less bruised than most old apples.
But a canoe of doubt still sails my brain-sea
weekly, and I can’t help but wonder if trauma
ever really heals, or just remains as layered hard
orange shellac on the inside wall of my skull.
My cell pings—a text from my youngest,
the neuroscientist.
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