Two Like Pavlova.

The fingers. The tooth. The nail.
Foot patterns that sound of running hail.
Maybe more, or not. Go ahead,
dissect me.


The arching back. The skyline a graceful neck.
I'm no wreckage so
sound out the plosives with caution.
Pronunciation pure,
kiss my freckles.

_________________

"The voice. The handwriting. The gait.
Maybe the smell of my hair.
That's all. Go ahead,
resurrect me."

-Vera Pavlova

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."

-E.L. Doctorow

Living Elements/Filaments.

No one I know likes wearing socks to bed

except my grandma who doesn't mind,
even wears a cranberry house coat
since I was little and
doesn't remember
what time it is
what time it was
how thick my skin is
or what year it is.

She doesn't know what kind
of jello she likes or when she
last took a shower, but
she knows that something isn't right.
The fruit flies whisper it to her and
so do the lumps in her gravy.
A light that has seen Edison
in the shop making filaments,
World Wars One and Two and Three rumble in

a stomach that has been hungry
since the depression,
is loosing itself
from the attic in the Cherry Street house,
losing the effervescent glow
that my mother knows of
that my mother and aunt hold on to
until it is time to turn off
the attic light
and walk down to their living below.

Early Rain.

If I am awake it is only because
the rain is so loud
the drains are so full
and these four walls
make a hull of a house.
If I am awake, it is because

my comforter is not made of geese
softness, but hides wafts of my
sighs in the creases, lets my toes
wiggle in the deep darkness
at the foot of the bed.
This sleepy head needs to rock

herself down on the choirs
of muted falling rainclouds,
mist and fog, to retire regardless
of the wooing of harbor boats,
the migrating southward flock,
home with paper-thin walls or not.

Pie Day.

My mother made pies,
clean cherry pies that lay
copacetic by
the blackened coffee
in the burnt clear orb
of the diner pot.

Every evening
she wrote on napkins,
humming them at dusk,
gray-blue eyes twinkling
in the rose gloam-time.

She self-confident
in my small child eyes
opened the windows
for fresh air, for breath,
only to close them
when our voices rose
above propriety.

The pitted cherries
formed to my fingertips,
squeaky thimble fruits
licked off by my baby tongue.

Beachie Migrates.

North swims down the coast but when it passes away and dies,
North migrates again. Look, leaving the porch are its two girls
one old
one not, following the flow of the dry path leading
to the hollowed hull of the barren tire swing tree. See,

the blushing light leaves make a low percussive soundtrack
to the shuffling of gravel and grass beneath old sneakers,
beneath a frame so old, so frail, it needs the crook of my
much younger arm, silver with a light layer of sweat. Yet

she is not mine to own but mine to love;
We share her fingernails and narrowed bone and marrow,
her sun glow skin and her rolling voice of ocean waves
that stirs up pebbles at the bottom of the family shore.

Where have you gone and why do you hide behind the phone
behind returned envelopes
stamped, behind yourself?
I will sit on a worn sofa holding you until you leave me,
until we fly migratory-style like geese into the morning,
knowing the door is never closed but open

and look, see.
My doorbell works, and we peck lips through the screen.
It has been too long; shadows out on the porch wait to
come inside where it is cool.

The Tree Line.

Walk beyond the tree line,
even if the sun scorches
your fragile tender skin—
the roots and branches thin,
burning the smell of pine into the air with
spring and summer whipping through my hair.

Burn, dodge, and bury me
in the darkened patches of shade,
under trees, lumberjack trees,
the umbrellas for my ashes
in needled acid ground,
wildflowers round my dusty head.