Poetry
four
THE FRUIT DOES NOT FALL FAR FROM THE TREE
I thought so and so still loved me.
Or wanted to have sex with me.
Or was it my husband.
Had been looking for anything “mild to wild.”
Had settled for.
Was actually quite vanilla when the clothes came off.
When he got off, that is.
Just wanted to get home to his wife and kiddos.
Glad I was done with making babies.
Been there done that.
Truth be told. I
I used to be careful.
Even selective.
Some said finicky, others fickle.
Of what I was willing to take into my body.
Over whoever I’d let fuck me.
And precisely which holes and in what order.
Now every day pretty much a slut fest.
A come hither what may.
Mask or no mask.
Vax or no vax.
Even my mother has gotten in line!
The ghost of my mother, that is.
Before the metastatic cancer devoured the lining of her stomach.
Her uterus.
Such appetite, we say!
Each week Dad tells me what he’s having for breakfast.
Right then and there.
A fried egg.
Avocado on toast.
Doesn’t matter if it’s ten a.m. or ten p.m.
Always seem to end up in my father’s head.
His bed.
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
Unending pillow talk.
Things we’ve never spoken about.
Morning wood, for example.
His, mine.
Such appetite!
So voracious and suddenly!
The grave cave now has us in its monstrous jaws!
The fruit does not fall far from the tree.
Ready or not.
Ready to eat.
HUNGER
We eat lower
on the food chain—
shrimp, scallops—
the future of this planet
on our minds
as we are that much
in love. He loves
his daughter, wants
food left in the ocean
long after we are
gone. Everyone
seems to be looking
for an exit strategy.
A poet once told me
feeling a tiger sink
its jaws into her
throat was the way
she wanted to go,
a woman hooked up
to a machine—
the metastatic
cancer twisting her
spinal bones beyond
recognition, her secret
lover too far away
to shut her eyes
when the last moments
came (just as he
had predicted), his
wife having called her
a five-cent whore
when answering
machines instead of
voice mails were
de rigueur
as the French are
fond of saying.
Her married lover
called me
six weeks later
when news of her
death had made
the rounds, he
who never got to
see her stripped
hospital bed.
She was too weak
for her last meal,
died without leaving
a notarized will,
intestate is what
the probate lawyers
said, smell of blood
in the air as everyone
circled. Is it a crime
to order a filet
of halibut or shark
in times like these
wherever the mythic
imagination
is to blame?
We want our love
modest, bite-sized
as little girls
slurp down oysters
at the roadside
bar, unaware
how their futures
depend on ours—
SELF-PORTRAIT AS STRIP-MALL MASSEUSE
Open wide. I’ve been
the sorry flavor
of the month. The fifteen-
minute back-room
gang bang. I can say
it sometimes hurt
to be made
to play the asshole
in someone else’s idea
of a good time.
Call me Jasmine.
Call me Pearl River
coagulating in your throat!
It took me forever
to get here, decked out
in my silk brocade!
Won’t you look at me
now? Am I not
the same woman
traded in for the next
model? Call me Whore
of the Earth! I’m begging
you to finger me
one last time.
Put a bullet in the back
of my skull—
I can take it.
Hurry. There's a long
line of rapt men
just outside the door
clamoring to cop
a feel, all dying
to get off—
THE WAR
At the base of the mountain
where I live, when a man starts
screaming, banging pots and pans,
I climb up on the roof and wait
for a bear to cross the road—
sometimes a mother and her cubs—
but this time it’s only geese
leaving poop on my neighbor’s lawn—
must be good for something
though what I couldn’t say.
What a ruckus privilege can be
on lands that were never ours
to begin with—speed-limit signs
blasted by a shotgun
leaving divots the size of golfballs
where the paint had been—
dented metal underneath an affront
to boredom. Hurry up
and graduate! No need not to
get out of town and leave
the landscape to its lonesome.
My neighbor’s mailbox
crowned with the silhouette
of a moose was taken out
by a snowplow—its door left
hanging on a hinge. He must be
popular by all the mail I see
spilling out of it, weeds
creeping up the rusted post.
I suppose it's politically correct
to mention how this land
was un-ceded by the Lenape
centuries ago, my ancestors
squatting on another continent
until the trains came through
piled high with first-growth wood
and beaver pelts. A few forts
remain on the pond with an island
where a black man had been
lynched. You can look it up
on microfiche in our town hall
but no one does, trusting
local rumors as we barbecue
brown-speckled trout
the Catskills are famous for
and you don't need a license
to eat it. Ever grow tired
of living? We've had it pretty
good, proud to be stewards
where taxes remain low,
the pandemic notwithstanding.
We can even speak a few words
in a native tongue learned
off the internet, sing
some songs to bless the raptors
who return each year
even when a pet or two
go missing. Sometimes birders
can be seen climbing over
barbed wire, their binoculars
a dead giveaway. Don't believe
everything you hear—kids
who scaled a cliff to reach
an eagle's nest they swore
was glittering in the sun
from miles off—its branches
interwoven with collars—
more dog and cat IDs
than medals hung on a general.