If anyone ever asks
what it takes to make it,
just tell them it costs
one thousand and fifty dollars:
Rome, one way, one thousand dollars,
Umbria, by train, fifty bucks.
If anyone ever asks
what it takes to make it,
just tell them it costs
one thousand and fifty dollars:
Rome, one way, one thousand dollars,
Umbria, by train, fifty bucks.
I had a dream you bought a new wagon,
red and sleek, Radio Flyer in white
across the side.
I filled it with flowers, ran it across prairie hills,
zigzagged between bison and Indians,
and cowboys leaning on saddle horns.
I floated on pea-green rivers—
fish silhouetted in mushroom blue—
and off into the sea,
where waves sparked and shone
in shark phosphor and coral spike.
I woke, wheels a-squeak in prairie grass,
I pulled into sunset and down into a valley,
basement dark and dank.
Behind, wildflowers glowed
between the tracks of my Radio Flyer,
a map of the way back to you.
It was prophesied that Kronos, king of the gods, would lose his throne to his son, just as he had taken rule from his own father. To vacate the prophesy, Kronos swallowed his children at their birth. But Rhea, his wife, saved one boy by giving Kronos a stone to swallow instead and spiriting the redeemed boy to Crete. As an adult, Zeus overthrew Kronos and imprisoned him on Tartaros in a deep pit. Centuries later, Zeus had mercy on his father, released him from his prison and put him on the throne of Elysium.
he lifted his chin, profile with mountain teeth
and breathed a breath, a little flit of a sound
loud as butterfly wing
down the divide at the wheel of the dodge,
he grew louder—was heard in winds
that ratcheted along knuckly ridges,
white as bones
eyes afire, bow-strong in the shoulder,
arms like knotted rope, hands like blacksmith tongs
big enough to wrap my head, all and then,
as if banished, none
separated from my father,
i have seen the mountains again
they aren’t nearly as big
their teeth not as sharp
the air not as clear
and he’s grown small,
frame crooked as an old door,
he limps, hair grayed, arms weak,
back bowed, he mumbles about weather
his eyes dark and cold
Charts and forms, she says,
are greater burdens than pulling people
from festering messes of gangrene
and cancers and bacteria,
tragedies that will never catch me.
She leans over a microwave bowl
at the nurse’s station for a midnight meal,
eyes blurred by ink.
I will be saved by this woman
who reads between the lines.
Eyes closed, breath in gentle waves,
his hands rest on knees
raised from the sidewalk
on cement-dusted boots.
In jangles of humanness, salty and ripe,
quiet panics, sudden shouts,
heat brushes off the street in puffs—
he is cool stillness.
Wrist watches gandered and tapped,
feet click pavement, shuffle in the heat—
Detached from desire, suffering ends.
The concrete is warm, the bus has come.
He watches Lady limp senseless.
Mac knows seventeen years
is a long time for a dog.
Another week won’t matter.
In my diet-cola dream life—
tanned, fast-carred, DVD’d , G-strung,
siliconed and lipo’d, all low-sodium,
without calories, no carbs or protein—
my percent daily values
based on a 2,000 calorie diet
(with phenylalanine and potassium benzoate
to protect flavor)
bring me to the the mirror
where I want to see taut skin and ribs,
bulging biceps, pecs like butterfly wings.
Instead, I understand total fat.
great grandpa pulls chin high
as if for a blow—derby tipped back,
eyebrows up, shirt buttoned to the collar
but for the smile, he’s lost in men and boys
draped over the ropes and along the ring
with fists cocked, faces chiseled and cinched
a wisp of sepia smoke
rises from his cigar;
his suspenders snap
as powder lights the room
She comes apart, shirt bunched
about her breasts
and showing hip going to fat—
but not yet.
She turns, skirt falls a little
reveals the elastic line
of white cotton, tag flipped up
like a baited fish hook.
She straightens everything out
with a whisk of fingers, cinches it
all tight with a snap. Nearby,
a breath turns to a sigh.
Coffee spoons tinkle against morning,
she tells me her nightmares—
house-trapped old women,
ghosts asleep on park benches,
walkers and wheelchairs and ventilators.
She touches her cheek, wrinkles spider away,
veins creep along the back of her hand.
I listen and watch and want to remember
when I spread my fingers
across her skin, calm and smooth.