|
Sample
Poems
A young woman allergic to wasps tries to
reach out to a neighbor, unsure if he is a jock, or a murderer; a
feisty lobsterwoman ostracized by a North Atlantic fishing village
tells a handsome stranger of other strangers who have washed up on her
shore, and left her with a “brood of brats;” just before his
sixtieth birthday celebration, a man learns his only friend just died,
and faces more than his own mortality; in a small Southeast Asian
port, a woman living in the Australian Outback tries to find some
rapport with her hip new daughter-in-law from Chicago, and both
confronts unexpected terrors; a daughter tries to come to terms with
her brilliant father’s amorous adventures, and his physical decline.
Whether the story is set in Latin America, the Far East, Canada
or the United States, an undercurrent of hope and longing ties these
apparently diverse characters together in a compelling and poignant
unity.
|
THE
OTHER WOMAN
May her plane explode
with just one fatality.
But, should it not,
may the other woman spew
persistent dysentery
from your first night ever after.
May the other woman vomit
African bees and Argentine wasps.
May cobras uncoil from her loins.
May she be eaten not
by something dramatic like lions,
merely by a homely warthog.
I do not want her to fall down a well
for fear of spoiling the water
nor die on the highway because
she might obstruct traffic.
Rather, something easy, and cheap:
clap contracted en route from some other bloke.
And should she nonetheless survive
all these critical possibilities
may she quietly die of boredom with you.
|
Surrounded by flounder,
salt in our hair,
my father and I kneel on a pier.
We're sunburned after all day
in a small open boat.
I am six, my father - ?
He doesn't seem old.
He is handsome, charming,
his moustache is trim.
¤¤¤
How many women has he
already loved ... I grow up
to love many men.
Does he ever wonder about
this part of my life ... He tells me
of his affairs one afternoon
while records spin gypsy guitars
and in the next room, without warning
my mother dumbfounds us by dying.
¤¤¤
At six, I worry only how will we clean
all these platter-shaped fish
whose eyes migrated topside.
My father takes a thin knife,
slits bellies, dumps guts
for minnows darting like bees.
Then he teaches me to filet:
grip the throat of the tail,
slice terribly close to the bones.
|
"My father is walking today!"
I hold him by his belt as he leans into the metal walker and
shuffles one step. I'm startled to be able to see over the top of his head. He used to
stand six-foottwo.
"Come on, just one more step."
Watitha Jones, the nurse in the doorway, applauds.
His mind also meanders streets he hasn't seen for years, and he
is soon exhausted from the excursion.
Watitha and I guide him into his wheelchair, doubleloop canvas
straps around the metal armrests, then tie them firmly behind the blue plastic back.
Climber of mountains, swimmer of seas, he always chafed at
restraint. Lately, however, he no longer seems to notice the cotton vest oddly dubbed a
"posey" after its inventor. Still I hate to see him tied. But some days, with a
sudden burst of adrenaline, or as if he could escape the pain, he tries to get up, and
might fall again. The hip which splintered when he managed to take off on his own last
July still aches.
How one's world shrivels when one is in pain. My back....
"He can only think of himself," the supervisor noted
last week. "Existence is limited to his bodily concerns."
And yet...
"The Baron came to call this morning," my father tells
me in a low voice. "He brought his whole entourage. We are still in negotiations. We
had quite a party. Percy and Gustav and Vladimir and....'
|
|
