Purple Movements
Purple Dawn on the hill
would open orchids
with mental jaws-of-life,
boldly blazing,
But a quiet moment
has Venus flytrapped her,
mirroring her brovada,
leaving her limp.
Wilted! Just add water
and she’ll daisy dance,
teaching Crayola-cheeked children
the sublime cartography
of tripping on joy,
of squashing trailers,
of walking on hot coals
with matches between your toes.
It’s a vision worth
open eyes
every time she climbs down
here.
—WT
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Ode to a Cheap Shoe
You’re a cheap shoe,
a K-Mart ingenue,
white sole, synthetic smile,
sloppy laces fated to fray,
sloppy canvas that bleeds my socks.
Always complications!
I’ve been lucky enough
to find just my size
and then the surprise of
an enjoyable fit.
A one season shoe,
no presumptuous spring
in your step,
bouncing back from
the perils of pavement.
You give in at the toe, heave ho.
And I out grow, and,
Dear John, move on…
—WT
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Cardamom Apparitions
Now Blindness asks, What’s in a photograph?
That bending scent–your garden, ripe with dew…
Your softball scar! My gawky dyke giraffe!
Some laughter echoes, tracing down our youth.
The card’mom ghosts that clung to kitchen air…
House renovations–rainbow gingerbread…
The peachy rinse that clouded your roped hair…
Accordion folds…your grin, the sheets, our bed…
Apartments old and brittle; photographs.
So clingy to the touch…Prints left behind…
Your book unshelved, you cradle it–new calf.
Between the slips you visit wilder times
Without me. I turn off light’s waterfall–
Your skin my album…my state…sweet recall.
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4 a.m. Geneva
It’s a brute and it’s abrupt,
concrete step, cold in summer,
4 a.m. Geneva. Sterile gowns are
being unloaded beside me.
I guess they’ve learned to leave
the grieving alone on this shift.
It’s the most complete thought I’ve
had in an hour. If I don’t take the next
breath, the next moment won’t have
to come, the one without you in it.
And I might go back upstairs, slide my
palm under your fingers like a plate, wait
for the quiver that comes, might come
if I don’t breathe.
Why isn’t everyone screaming their
heads off? Why don’t the floors
buckle and the walls bleed? I should
have stayed longer, held you longer.
Simone, Simone. If I mantra your name
you’ll freeze with me. We’ll think of
something. I’ll think of something.
The doctors will think of something.
I’ve made it as far as the loading dock.
Simone, if you’re not going to breathe,
I’ll have to. The baby only knows
breathing and screaming.
—WT
This poem is a character sketch for the dramatic climax of the comedy screenplay, My Second Simone. The story is set in Baltimore and Geneva, Switzerland.
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Bathwater Tea
Bathwater Tea
Let’s banish Earl Grey in
favor of darjeeling
but bring back the
bergamot when the
window moon sings
lavender, orange peel and steam.
Candles from your “used” box,
red, peach, lime, cobalt colors,
sit on saucers from the
set your mother gave–
If she only knew.
It’s a clawfoot kettle,
a tapwater Niagara
spills, rage into resignation,
passion into peaceful
poolfullls of surrender.
Nowhere to go baby!
Rose petals bob and wash
up, saved, on the shore of your skin.
I know that shore and
I shadow it again
in the flickerlight, where your
everyday worrylines soften,
surrender, still oil shining on your
surfaces,
rocking in pastel paisleys on the
water’s lip,
kissing your crevices,
and I climb in.
I sip from your darjeeling
and it pools on my tongue
and I laugh, still self conscious
after all these moons. Your
full breasts surface as
you accommodate me
and I dive into a fragrance,
a fleshy bubble and a
cavernous mouthful of
darjeeling, bathwater and you.
—WT
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Movable Borders
I have enough to eat.
The news sells cereal
with a pound of flesh–
a charred toddler–air raid veteran.
My home is still
as a funeral parlor.
TV sells soap, the stain of mass
evacuations, walking mass graves,
eluding the cleansing. Today.
It burns the muscles of my
belief. But I never
did exercise regimentally…
I can touch the war between the
states with my great, great grand-
mother’s white glove hand. Our
farm, before the tornado took the
old Place…Young Heathcote Mill–
grinding the Mason-Dixon Line.
It could have been a hiding
place. Under the gearworks, behind
the race…for me, for railroad passengers…
I have known no war.
So I turn down the volume,
go for a snack when I’ve had my
fill–The child’s parents among
Those shot. The distance of death,
Sudden or slow. What I could know…
She never hit me. Our crime was
similarity.
Daughter and mother in the same
old battle to change each other.
Geography the only poultice/politic.
From America, Serbs and Albanians
look and sound and shoot the same,
playing Mother May I at the border, at the
pit, at the polls, apart.
No bullet pocks or splatter patterns
mark my sister’s house. Today.
I have known no war, she repeats like
a rifle, rolling his drawers for receipts.
He sets his pattern and she pours
herself into that casing. Confined,
she swells like bread. The hardening, the
hairline stress, his bottle-
rocket burst–Not rage, not
rage, not rage, she rattles.
CNN doesn’t blink.
They are cleansed. He is quiet.
She is quiet. He makes another
promise, unkeepable. She believes it
again, and rests. And Serbs slip over
the border with the clothes on their backs. And
Chechnyans drive over Russia, un-
welcome garbage scows. And the
Canada geese move in a v
for victory…or Vietnam…
She will visit me at Easter.
I will crucify my opinion to cleanse her stay;
a sacrifice for a cease-fire.
Delicious distance.
—WT
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Obama Ba-Da-Bing
“Obama is Change” but some things never change. I know well that sex and women’s bodies sell everything in Western culture. I discovered this t-shirt, with celebrity women allowing their images to be idealized, on Barack Obama’s site. I was searching for an image to accompany a post expressing my giddy elation that he’d been elected. But my bubble was burst, so here’s my witness that we can do better. We can be many changes!
And if not, some staffer from Obama’s campaign has a great future laying out department store ads in the Sunday paper!
