When world and time slow you
to adagio will hope wash out
on a mourning undertow will winter
passion lead only to vertigo dizzying
phone calls , throes of second-adolescent
angst while arthritis lands body blows
dementia plaques your synapses so
you have no earthly idea what why who
or
will you dance through
the entire zydeco concerto
stop only for more eau de vie
and French kisses under the mistletoe
throw your glass on the floor
throw your underwear out the window
throw caution to the wolves
hold your lover and never let go?
Your first job in New York is serving plastic plates to dolls
at the 22-dollar prix fixe lunch
half a month’s salary back home
the Buddha promised
10,000 Dharma doors
Gates into the verdigris Statue of Liberty now closed
You place the black-and-white saucer first then the cup
before the doll in the miniature chair
beside the girl
who could grow up to be anything but
will be a true believer
in Chanel Bendels Van Cleef and Arpels
Your hand holding the doll cup could be alien green
Manhattan breathes
Bulgari Tiffany Nike
splashes longing like Samsara
on the golden gates before you
Winner of the Bayley Art Museum (University of Virginia) Writer’s Eye prize; published in a folio of winning poems.
Mama wrote “Beach” in careful red
over that whole week on the kitchen calendar,
the one from Sandifer’s Funeral Home.
My cousins mashed M&Ms and sand
onto the 7-Up cake, our parents sweated
on the white veranda, Granny boiled shrimp
with bay and clove. We couldn’t see how
salt air lifts rust through paint.
Now, I pack for my daughter’s first
beach trip: swim diapers, SPF 45.
Granny faded to black and white years ago.
In the fall when four o’clock shadows
filled the curtains, Daddy toddled toothless
on swollen feet into mists of words
scattered like yellowed leaves from torn pages.
Mama, dead, left me the only adult.
Papered over with uncertainty, I held
a red pen in my own hand.
This summer, my nieces will poke the candy
into the cake, bury their Barbies in the dunes.
I will boil the shrimp myself, with clove and bay
while the surf carries my baby’s laugh
out to sea. This summer, I know the salt truth
of rust that waits under paint.
Published in Savannah Literary Journal, No. 8, 2001.
At the counter for cola and cookies
too many lights drew darkness down,
blinded me and knocked me right over.
Where were you? the nurse asked,
one of three bending over me.
They must know something
about how I hid behind the light.
They wrapped my head in a damp rag,
elevated my feet, trussed my arm
with a blood-pressure cuff,
covered me with two wool afghans
crocheted by the blind ladies.
The cola volunteer pulled up a chair.
He was from Nevada, a missionary,
whose name tag said “Elder.”
His smooth face said he couldn’t tell me
anything about deity. When he asked if I knew
his church, my mouth opened
but my thoughts and words hung apart
like odd socks on a clothesline.
The elder saw a sheep under those afghans
so he poured me another cup of RC Cola
and handed me a fist full of Oreos.
Beside the quiet rock of his listening
the cola and cookies became new blood.
I gave up my crown of rags, left the elder behind
with his own brand of light,
took up my suede pumps and walked.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA. 2001;286(5):508.)
Anthologized in Twenty, Spartanburg, SC: Hub City Press. 2005.
© 2018. The Athenaeum Press at Coastal Carolina University.
All work copyright of their respective authors.