Piano Lessons

That spring, I was ready to drop piano lessons. I wanted free school day afternoons. I wanted to be driven far out of town in beat-up jalopies at high speeds. Put on greasy lipstick dark as bitter chocolate so that some boy would think I was at least fifteen. I wanted to dangle a lit cigarette and drink gin and gingers in roadside dives, like in the movies. I wanted the boy behind the wheel to say, “Hey, you’re cool and sassy for a girl.”

My mother didn’t fancy my growing up so fast. She said, “Give it one more summer, honey.” Meaning the piano.

I crumbled. “Okay, but that’s it.”

You Can Keep

your diaphanous virgins
your horse and bull stories
your rites of spring
I can do
very well thank you
without swan
or unicorn.

Keep your
wishbone and your big
cigar your mighty Stetson and
your twelve-string
guitar I know
how to please my
self how to saddle
my own steed.

The Raven Roosts

With a flap and whoosh he alights
to rule from the clothesline pole,
his shield casting a shadow
of gloom on the bush branch that once
held the quick morning sun finch
whose seven-tone jazz riff played,
wee wee see wee dee wee dee.
Answered by unseen, trading sevens,
who who wee wee see wee dee.

Sweet memory of morning chirps,
the flash of red and yellow breasts
serving up my teacup of jazz.

Ocean City

Ocean City I’m on a fifth-storyhotel balconyat the crack of dawn staring past a row of rental propertiestoward vast waters beyond, as I wonderwhat ghosts lieon the hungover streets below. What sort of jukebox jiveor inebriated highdid that last breeze carry through? It’s a mid-summer den,a damn hotbed,of debauchery and sin on this morning after […]

The Ballerina’s Tale

The Ballerina’s Tale Each night inside that dead-end bar on the same stool without fail, she’d wait until the jukebox played “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Those barroom gallants jeered as they quickly gathered around, to cheer each time she’d pirouette until she tumbled down. While from a corner booth, dead set, his bloodred eyes […]

Note for Note

Note for Note Lovers always know their doom. ― Lynette Roberts The shadows from the past don’t sleep for long. They wake when least expected, as note for note, an old piano plays an unwritten song. Your double spies a long-lost love you wronged, waiting on a pier. All that’s now rote. Such shadows from […]

Brother, Can You Spare The Time?

Brother, Can You Spare The Time? To be fully present for the sensation of a moment where you can discover what lies behind the human masquerade, and have the chance to make everything in your life new again. You’ll uncover grief, sorrow and passion in the sensing of the body armor. The tragic spiritual mediocrity […]

Husband: All Earth

Husband: All Earth I. Led Zeppelin on Spotify, movie posters on walls, Coors Light and Old Spice, here she dove softly into cool dust. At home, it was canyons and dirt, long showers after boring sex. Her husband: all earth. Here, they were all bodies, purple Gatorade, no sleep. II. Third Eye Blind on Spotify, […]

Impressions of the Sickhouse

Impressions of the Sickhouse I watch in the world, amused by massacre and gin, homeland walls, holiday wars. Viewed from the barred gate darkened surveillance cars prowl, aimless under winter afternoon skies. Cold weather tramps straggle past construction generators, pavement gaps, work order water leaks. I take into consideration the symbolic and the sin. I […]

Dayton Street

Dayton Street Remember when diapers were delivered By a truck with a stork painted on it? I still see that truck once in a while, Like a sighting of the Goodyear blimp. Or maybe I made that up; Memory and reality don’t really mesh. Crashing the Tupperware party, I found more plastic. But far be […]

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