Privileges

I start the day by eating toast 

with avocado instead of egg 

to begin a new ritual in my new 

moss green kitchen 

where I hang a gold and blue image

of Our lady of Guadalupe 

to save me from misfortune 

because I have always been superstitious 

and now grateful 

that I don’t live anywhere near

Palestine, Ohio 

where a homeowner with a bad cough 

took a microphone and told the

CEO of Norfolk Southern 

that his company stinks. 

I too have a right to feel wounded 

by miseries bursting from pipes 

and potholes and cracked sidewalks 

across my state.

 

Inside me a loud cry

will not cease 

for I know there

is no savior, no path away

from slumped bodies tossed  

under feeways by big owners.

of everything.

The smoke of small fires drifts out 

from the underpasses 

so we cannot forget 

who sleeps there. 

But I have avocados, sonnets, 

leaves from Lake Chabot, a grandchild,

a plane ticket. 

I can look but not get

away. 

Meteorology

I only need to hear 

the first three notes 

in his voice to know 

he speaks the truth about his homework

so I say, Ok Have another 

of whatever he is asking for.  

My little man hasn’t figured out 

how well I know him.  

He doesn’t realize his First Grade heart beats 

inside a glass cage for all to see.  

He tells me, Miss Robbins says 

she has eyes 

in the back of her head 

but I think she’s just kidding, don’t you?

I am the meteorologist of his moods. 

I know what he’ll say and what he’ll do 

until the day a shadow darkens his upper lip. 

That’s when he changes passwords 

on all his devices. 

And when the How would I know? answer 

shoots down my every question.  

Warnings, slow, like a truck beeping in reverse. 

And then one night the roof blows open. 

A spray of cologne announces 

a blunt has just been lit.  

And the whispers of a girl wake me

in the middle of the night. 

Each dawn pulls him further from 

the glass cage into a steel vault

and me wondering, must I love

him harder or with more ease?

The answer, like an engine 
in a rusty old car, 

turns and turns but never catches.

Cicadas

 When facebook flashes pictures 

I posted 10 years ago, or 7, or even only 4,

an ache crawls through me with claws.  

My thumb and finger 

go in for a closer look 

at this precious being, lost. 

Not dead, grown. A kind of death.

The soft child feathers shed. 

It makes me weak to see 

that funny expression.

So in love we were! 

A child grows noiselessly, 

as if by a spell—

all in one night pulled 

into the mystery. 

The force is in them, 

making them tall & hairy 

& hooded--making them say mean things 

and then apologize.

 I wish babies would hatch 

—not one beauty at a time —but

like cicadas—by the millions.

Not just one grinning, toothless boy-- but 

millions exactly like him 

all springing from the earth

every few years, 

high singing, buzzing.

The school reports

The school reports my teen man 

missing again.  I wonder 

what am I supposed to do 

with this new bullet of hurt? 

Peace with him now as brief 

as a traffic stop before 

the next bad news.  

Is there any use to sit 

on the edge of his bed to talk?   

Or to grab his stack of curls and pull 

him to the floor like my mother 

did to mine?

In the beginning, he never disobeyed 

or snarled or cursed.  

I thought it such a blessing 

but now I ask the thin air all around, 

was that a clue I missed--

some kind of secret suffering? 

Who knows why his future 

shows up like this—the days 

of sweet behavior giving way to vaping 

and mating in the back seat.  

Surely that good-kid blood still 

flows through his veins. 

All that light of heaven he 

once shared freely 

he may share again—

tho less evenly, less often—coerced 

by the dictatorship of

life.

In a poetry workshop

 

The poet to my right coils and uncoils.

Flattens her chest against the table.

Crosses and uncrosses her legs.

She just can’t contain 

herself in a single form when she

speaks of her mean lovers.

Not her on my left with a penchant

for all the other hard things in life, 

which she reads to us with 

spine straight as a rod.

Her whole body pleading,

Please don’t hurt me.

Another sits deadpan. 

Life has scraped her clean. 

Taken her apart bone by bone.

Washed and dressed her

and set her down across from me.

Her poems fidget. Search 

for a place for the pain to start.

She asks, Can someone help me?

We writers model courtesy, self-control. 

There’s not one carnival vibe among us. 

We don’t even blink when our teacher

tells us he will soon be dying.

On command we pick up our pens--

our rescue—

And write down his prompt—Mercy. 

And then beg for it 

shamelessly.

Corporate mergers

Microsoft buys Activision; Kroger buys Albertsons; AT&T buys CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT; Warner Bros, Disney buys Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox; Google buys smaller things, Comcast buys everything else

Another merger, just as the prophet 

Marx predicted.

   

Capital never sleeps. 

In continuous motion, sucking all 

its forked and flicking tongue 

can bag in this craving 

 for omnipotence 

over nations, over new planets.

 Soon over Black Holes.

And we the ruined shops and souls 

are just their fuel.

And we the stars that twitch

then vanish over their event horizons, 

are torn into indivisible bits

where once we were whole beings 

who created all manner of angels and spheres

to save us from all manner of hells 

but who are so frail

before a force

that swallows light itself.

What's ahead

The old warned us there’s deprivation

up ahead 

that worsens with time.

Parents, pets, friends--all we love--

carried away

and our own sweet bodies 

a shock in the mirror.

They did not mention a sunset on the Bay 

could bring more peace than a

striving young heart 

could know 

just by placing one foot after the other

along the pebbled beach,

my friend laughing beside me;

a picnic of lamb chops and mango waiting 

in my backpack for a shady spot. 

Everything needed provided.

But on this sunset my friend turns her face 

from the glow and says,

 I‘ve got 15 summers left, 

if i'm lucky. 

So she plans her summers with care now.  

Each a precious stone kept safe from thieves.

I was angry at my mother for not coming

that month I lay pinned to a hospital bed.

But how could I know it was her last summer?

A summer of curated movements. 

I wish I had not argued with my man that June 

he tripped on the sidewalk 

when it took precious summer days to heal. 

We did not know it was his last June. 

How could we have known that in October 

the sun would set at six and not rise again?

One by one they walked out of this house—

or were carried out. 

The oldest daughter, then her sister, brother

my mother,  

……..my husband, my dear, my man, my angel.

And now the final leaving--our boy's packing   

and this house enlarges as with every departure.  

It's a castle now: ceilings sky high, hallway 

a cavern--the whole place a relic, 

unsound and useless.