September 2024
Bio Note: I am a four time Pushcart Prize nominee and two time Best of the Net Nominee. I have published six books of poetry. My latest That Infinite Roar, published by Gyroscope Press. My poetic themes come from working with Southeast Asian refugees, living as an expatriate in Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Brazil, and raising a husband and son.
Old Married Couple Cutting Watermelon
There are some things
we just don't do well together.
I am not your tennis partner.
There are some mountains you climb alone.
I cannot sing while you tune your guitar.
But, we have learned the rhythm of
a couple with a cleaver.
We both know how to check for ripeness.
A lawn green skin with a yellow sun
bursting at its center.
An ear to the rind,
checking for the sea caught in a shell sound.
At home, we prepare the counter
find a balance so the orb does not roll,
fill containers with a ruby red squares
that will quench our aging thirst.
One July day, while you napped
the temperature grew thick
as a watermelon skin.
Alone in the kitchen, I tackled the green ball
with a serrated edge,
found the sweet spot on the counter
to conquer the roll, sliced the fruit
in halves and quarters until tins were glowing
with squares looking like polished gems.
What I thought was a job for two,
I could do by myself--
handle a knife, square a slice, dispose of rinds,
fill a bowl that only I would gorge from,
a selfish appetite quenched.
Alone, in the kitchen,
I picked the ripest pieces,
but the juices did not burst,
nor run over my tongue
with the same coupled sweetness.
Originally published in Gyroscope Review
The Paris Diner
Sometimes my appetite
scrolls back to the days
where I never worried
about greasy pleasures
dripping in sugared condiments,
and I want to be back at the Paris Diner
with you at 2:00 a.m., high from every urge.
The Paris Diner was not in Paris.
Paris was not in our vocabulary,
it was only a dive in Flatbush
that we stumbled into on nights
when everything was satiated
by a yearning for fries and ketchup and whipped cream
dripping over those curved fountain glasses.
Between our heated flesh and furtive kisses,
we sipped something thick and creamy,
and our simple lives flowed through a paper straw.
Originally published in Inquisitive Eater
One Garden: Two Views
Sometimes I sleep next to a stranger,
how different our dreams:
He mutters a purposeful mix of tongues
I choke on tentative terrors of night.
Then one day we wake to June,
and attempt our garden.
He is careful to detail--
a single seed in the egg carton's cardboard pocket.
I scatter nasturtium seeds as groundcover.
In two days his sprout;
mine never poke past pebbled soil.
He tends those limp transplants
with a careful mix of soil and sweat,
One day peppers will drop off thick stems
while I imagine a seed I threw
scattered then bloomed in someone else's garden.
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