sometimes I write the word "mother"
when I actually mean "cat"

condensation on the bookshelf,
the lower drawer in the kitchenette,
a puddle of gruel accumulating
on the seat of the new "winged
chariot" Ford Odyssey, September
slopping into the bucket you keep
under your chair, in case,
the crossing-guards drop by again,
hungry for some baked Alaska
with artificial violets

______

T.S. Eliot fans will bust a hip laughing: http://www.corprew.org/content/lolcat-wasteland


READING THIS THURSDAY -- WALTZ CAFE IN ASTORIA

[Growling Softly] is now out! I can't wait to get my contributor's copy!

For Loretta

sleeping hands, your rooms are empty
or contain one fish  one girl  a chair

or a garden aching with green symmetry 
their eyes are far into the horizon

or the floor      there is never any
electricity but lots of  perfect 

clouds      round, boyant 
glowing pinkly underneath like 

slowing opening mouths
like soft teeth at dawn     

your walls are green or blue or pink
your children are lost

in thought or lost in time
your floors, neat, spacious 

somewhere several soft lights are glowing
we never know where     the children’s

hands blanch and pinken as if they are very
cold or very anemic    we notice their cheeks 

uneasily      that glow means a fever  
some odd and secret excitement

white peaches piled in the vegetable
aisle or spilling from vendors out into

the smoke smeared, gummy dark
sidewalk have that kind of iridescent

dangerous salmon shiver or blur
we imagine at night the soft half 

moons of the children’s naked 
fingernails glow steadily as if they 

are lit within and some of the light 
is leaking out     as if, if they opened 

their mouths,    we would see other 
pastels rooms   empty as this one   

The Disquieting Muses

We are all waiting by the gate. Down below us, water slaps in irregular movements against the stone. In the shadows the ripples are grey and green, sometimes brown. In the light, we can see only white reflections, a trapped sun. The children finally collapse in the dirt, rubbing their fingers in the dust and then sucking them. The parents lift their children by the hands, try to get them to stand. The children slide down slowly as if the bones in their legs have turned to syrup. They hold the fallen maple leaves to their ears, crinkle the dry red back and forth.

The older children try to walk but the sounds under their feet stop them. They lift their sandels gingerly, distracted by the rustle. The parents continue to walk in circles, talking on their cell phones or staring morosely at the sky, waiting for the gate to open.