Poetry I

Photograph

“He dead”, she said. “I show”;
Then unwrapped the Holy Bible
With a picture of him, dead, still and white
Powdered and tucked in his coffin up to his neck
With a racy foulard bunched out over the coverlet

“See”, she said. “He dead”

At the wake
Herself all in black,
Disconsolate and restrained by grieving sisters,
She pulled a camera from her handbag and snapped his picture

Engraved his already black-and-white face


His black suit

His black coffin

And then, later, painted his foulard red
Like a blooming rose for her memory.

Cigars

I'm going to light a cigar, 

Puff on the blue, billowing smoke,

Suck it deep, feel it hit deep inside

Suck it again, my whole insides full

I'm going to light another

Taste the sweetness of the leaves on my tongue

Taste the bite of the smoke

Suck it down again, and

Blow out enormous, cumulous, billowed, soft, enveloping clouds of smoke

Old Maid

Her long, white finters wiped

  her tea cup clean like a chalice

Brushed crumbs from the tablecloth

  like bits of host from the altar,

Smoothing wrinkles,

Patting her lips dry.

Bloodless movements 

Without the passion and the sacrifice of the Mass

Group Tourists

Group tourists, strung together

   like goods in a bazaar

Shake one, they all shake

Drawn taut with perimeter wire

To keep out the sapper, the fox

Alone

I am an observer, a reader of signs

A decipherer of origins

An eye-painter

The East Side

the East Side is funny

with its curly hair

  in the morning

not so funny when

  the subway

breathes up its thighs

  and sighs

Ooze

I met a man worried about his feet

About a fungus growing in the drain

  crawling, oozing up onto his feet

"You can never be too careful", he said

Stopping to buy Lysol

To put in his travel kit

For hotel drains

To stop the ooze

And let him sleep

Untitled

My iron-clad case is rusty

My open-and-shut one mildewed

The vent to my emotions not working

My heart strings frayed through

I'm a pitiable mess

My body needs overhaul

Prices are rising, and I'm surmising

I'll not be fixed at all