September 2024
Bio Note: Lately when I think about “the fruits of my labor,” my sons and grandsons come to mind. A garden of delights. My latest book is No Angels (Kelsay, 2023), and I’ve just won the William Matthews Prize from Asheville Poetry Review.
Tea Party with My Grandson
Weary of sword fights and fisticuffs,
battle cries and cudgels, I suggest a party,
root out the tea set I bought my grandson
for Christmas, and help him set the table.
We gather badgers, rabbits, monkeys, bears,
chipmunks, a toothy alligator, plush creatures
from the gentler world of children’s stories
where animals can talk and handle
a fork and piece of cake. Accepting this shift
from action figures to cuddlies, my grandson
arranges the guests and pours imaginary
punch. In a moment of silence, Jacob and I
consider the scene and the narrative it requires.
Never at a loss, he begins with the birthday
song for Monkey, but then the story takes
another turn. Even here, as someone said
of fiction, only trouble is interesting.
Peter Rabbit will not sit next to Alligator,
so I intervene to move him and soothe
his fears. But I can’t keep up with the unfolding
drama. Freddy Teddy blows out the birthday
candles before Monkey can. Badger gloats
when he’s served a larger piece of cake
than Chrissy Chipmunk, who begins to cry.
When the fuzzy python sidles into the party,
pandemonium breaks loose. Only the promise
of another, larger cake with chocolate icing,
another pot of punch, and a mouse for the snake
bring please’s, thank you’s, apologies all around.
A kind of peace, temporary as any other.
Originally published in Whale Road Review
Feast
Fingers pungent with oranges,
rough crumbs nestled in folds
of your shirt, you meet me
at the door as I haul in
bag after bag of groceries.
Your wrists poke from sleeves,
ankles perch between sneakers
and the hems of jeans. Meals?
there is no break between breakfast
and lunch, lunch and dinner, only
one cornucopia spilling through
your days, broken only by sleep.
I pour milk into your long bones
and their knobs, sprockets, levers
strain against your skin,
ache in your calves and knees,
your flesh drawn so tightly
on your ribs it surely hurts.
You’re blind to what this agony
begins by fits and starts to show:
broad shoulders and lean back,
the tapered hips; under your troubled
skin and pout, a narrow face, a mouth
women will notice. I keep it secret,
like a family recipe. Your raw
ingredients, this chaos
that precedes a feast.
Originally published in Gyroscope Review
Speechless
He pushes the bottle away to stare
at the milk I swirl, and smiles a secret,
as if he’s considering the properties
of liquids. Though he knows the taste
of his mother’s milk, he’s seen it only
in droplets, never in such abundance.
And how did it come to be here?
He presses a finger against numbers
that measure ounces, then turns
to nuzzle my old breast hidden
beneath sweaters, looks back
at the bottle, and kisses my hand.
As he totters across the lawn,
how does he store the brown leaf
he crumbles, not knowing its name?
Does he know it as one of those
he gazed at when, gold as canaries,
they shivered above his head
in October wind? What is thinking
without words? Enchantment. Rapture.
Staring at ripples in the lake, so small
an acolyte of the world, his silence
praises the god with no name.
Originally published in Southern Poetry Review
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