You there, cash

You there, cash, remember how it used to be?
You played so hard to get at times, I thought
I wanted you more than you wanted me.
I made a fool of myself for you--
The things I said and did to keep you near--
Some of it I regret but honestly, most I don’t.
Marriage is a risky business. It takes time to learn
who you are and who I am and how to live together.
Hallmark may not make a card for how we feel but that’s ok,
I never knew such loving as I’ve had with you,
through thick and thin. (Remember the times
I threw my purse at you?)
Didn't we always make up to find
we cared more for each other every year?
To be honest, I cared way too much:
Shouldn’t have let you make so many of
My decisions, but it’s too late now for us to part.

Does he know?

In the last weeks, I wonder, does my father knows he's dying,
I wonder, does he care.
I try to decipher his mood as he sits
with a wool blanket on his lap
and later in the naval hospital where his body
becomes so light the nurse carries him to bed.
I seek a name for his mood so I can dwell
on its meaning, approach it appropriately.
But as a dying man he is not much different
from the man who was not dying.
I read that EEGs of alcoholics show flattened brain
waves so I picture my father’s mind as an uneven
table top and think of what his sister says,
Francis is not a great husband, not a great father,
but he is a wonderful brother.
He is not one but three people, maybe more.
My father is funny that way.
We are all funny that way.
After his last breath, we stare down at him,
not knowing it was the last, waiting for one more
flutter, a lurch or gurgle and when none comes,
I joke to my mother, Now you can tell me he wasn’t my father.
It is mean to say it right there where my father’s skin
still gives out a bit of heat, and his mouth hangs open wide,
as if he is stunned by my hardness.

If I opened my mouth....

My mother believes a good husband--
a man with a good job--is the foundation
of a happy life and that's why she sends me to
modeling school.
Modeling is a sport of good bones and self sacrifice,
a sport where you stride across slippery platforms
like Cinderella turned stripper, hips first, arms swaying,
shoulders square and steady.
I have to push myself to walk in those very high heels
without looking down, make my big fake smile
look natural.
 Miss McCarthy! Posture! the instructor shouts
 and I try to wobble less. Pose! she shouts, this means
with a toe turned out, not in, with chin tilted slightly,
eyes straight ahead.
Some exhilarating spirit is entering me day by day,
turning me into a girl who likes to be witty,
who didn’t want a husband but a lover,
and maybe more than one,
maybe even more than two.
But if I let all that come out,
my mother would have hit me.

Panic

My mother always says the man’s a fool so it comes 

as a surprise, how surely my father drives through 

the maze of streets in New York City. He makes no 

wrong turns, asks for no directions, 

consults no maps. From the back of our Rambler, 

four children thrust heads into the beeping horns, 

into the streams of cars and buses that waver

and wobble forward like penned cattle, 

and there’s my father driving calmly right through 

all that mayhem as if he enjoys it. He even points 

things out to us. 

See, that's the Stock exchange. 

Over there, that mansion, Andrew Carnegie lived there. 

Just like that, all the way to Long Long Island 

without a single hitch. 

It is late afternoon when we arrive at his mother’s

beach house. After miles of dried Indiana clay, 

the glittery Atlantic ocean stuns, an amazing sight, 

a planet in itself, etched in gold. But what I see next 

stops me in my tracks: rising from the whirling water, 

armies of black-shelled creatures as big as geese

with feathery claws and snapping tails, and eyes with 

pouches like purses, are crawling over sand, 

whiskers twitching, toward us. 

We scramble up the porch squealing, beating 

on the door, we are banging, we are yelling, 

we are crying, but my father’s only swaying, he is

pouring, and his mother’s saying Francis, 

you've had enough, and the ice is tossing in the shaker, 

the vodka’s splashing and I am understanding 

my father’s not a fool, he’s a drunk.

The Jump

As a kid, nothing was more exciting
on a sunbaked afternoon
than a jump off the diving board
at the neighborhood pool--not a dive,
I didn't how to dive--but a good jump,
Like a jump from a tree into a river,
A clumsy jump that  began with a rapid waddle
to the end of the board and then a gangly leap into the air,
one hand plugging my nose,
suspended for an instant like a dolphin,
quickly gulping a mouthful of breath, holding it,
and then a long, slow plunge,
my burned body finally
breaking the cold water,
the delightful shock of submersion,
sinking lower and lower,
losing my weight, my direction,
my hearing, all my heat,
my burning eyes wide open,
the taste of chlorine,
the breath bursting from my lungs,
And then a gentle moon landing,
my butt touching the bottom,
And then bouncing up and down
against the concrete, and then
pushing my butt against that hard floor
to catapult me back up toward the white sky,
my long brown hair floating like seaweed,
hair slipping into my mouth,
my fierce splashing upward,
and just before my face breaks
through the water,
the warm pee between my thighs,
without blushing because no one knows,
no one will ever know.

The Proposal

The Proposal

Joe Burns puts his arm 

around my shoulder and he says marry me?

Inside my head an argument begins as if there 

were two of me, one eager to say yes, the other no.

Yes, oh yes, yes, yes to becoming a Burns, 

to being his mother’s daughter, 

his sister’s sister--the most popular girl in the universe--

whose starlights gloss my ugliness, my poverty, 

my many sins, let me walk in their beauty under 

Their very own personal sunny skies.

Joe seems to hold a mirror to my face and there 

They are--his sister, his mother, lovely and perfect

In their floral fabrics and he is saying,This could be you! 

The path from dark to bright, from clumsy, messy

To breezy softness, to sunny glowing order.

I see a wicker chair, a woman with an armful of flowers

who looks like me trying to make the flowers

Fit nicely into the vase, but the task is too complex,

the flowers bend, fall, scatter, she begins to cry. 

She is lost in this flower wicker sunroom, not being from there, 

she is a pantomime, does not fit into this air.

So when Joe’s lips move toward mine, I turn my head, 

And he stands up and walks away

And it’s like an elevator door has closed on me. 

The Best Place to Write

Cafes with their deep sofas, 

electrical outlets and people communicating 

on keyboards, books, blank paper

(but not with each other) 

are pleasantly lonely places.

For as long as I’ve been writing

I've been drawn again and again 

by the cafe’s power to capture my focus

--and I wonder, do minds function

best amid noisy arrangements

of people preoccupied with devices?

Because distractions, whether mundane 

ones such as letting out the dog or big ones 

like depression, with its repetitive thinking,

Can only be conquered by sitting in a cafe, 

where the moment I stand in line 

to order a green tea latte

everything in my life waits at the door, 

dares not follow me in, knowing it will be ignored, 

will cease to exist, and so I wonder, 

Is the ability to focus

(if not to be happy) most possible 

in a realm one does not own, 

among strangers, where one is a guest, 

and nothing is asked of her 

and where she can do nothing at all

about anything except write?