Brain Science

Sunday afternoon at the Minnesota Science Museum

Claire holds up a four-pound plasticized human brain
pointing out the parietal and frontal lobes,
turning it over to indicate where the medulla once
connected to the spinal cord.
She balances his brain like a ripe cantaloupe.

This once pearly, now clay-gray wad
of tissue held a million thoughts,
both conscious and involuntary,
of a man--now dead.
When Claire turns her attention,
I poke my finger between
the flowerets of cerebral cortex,
dig up the memory of
his first dog, Ginger,
tease out the forgotten scent
of a Norway pine where
he sat in a deer stand,
waiting like a rabbit with a gun.
Claire glances at me
and I hide my hands,
knowing my transgression
of reading, like braille,
another man's mind.
I whisper into my
muddied palms
"How did you die?
Do you regret what
you've become?"

The lid squeaks as
Claire closes the temperature-
controlled mock-mausoleum
clicks the padlock shut,
punches out for the day,
drives home whistling
"Let’s Go to Hunting"
as if by magic.

Crack Baby

Larry's lips form a circle as he blows
a smoke ring into Keleigh's pasty grey
face. Coughing, she opens the window a crack
to breath in the frosty air. It is winter
although no snow has yet fallen.
Larry's bright eyes dance with a song

playing on the radio. "What the name of that song?"
he says. Kel shrugs, "Give me a puff; quit blowing
dry air at me and give." Her resolve has fallen,
like her grades and her hopes, into a grey
pulp of ashes. She looks out the window into the wintry
sky. She feels as if her heart will crack

like a pumpkin after Halloween, crack
like her voice when she sings a song
that's too high, crack like the first ice in winter
when she steps gingerly on its glass. Blown,
Keleigh has blown her chances. When she's grey-
haired and wrinkled, she'll look back on this fallen

day and ache like a mother bird whose chick has fallen
out of the nest, too young to fly. The shell cracked
but the wings still folded. Its only hope is its grey
plumage to cammoflage it in the dirt. No song
sings from bird's beak or woman's heart. No blowing
winds of hope lift either spirit. It is winter.

Larry hands her the pipe, "Here's your woolie, you winter-
strawberry." Keleigh cradles the pipe, looks at her weightless, fallen
man. Abruptly she wants neither the screw nor the crack. "Blow
it yourself; I don't want your Love," she says with a voice that cracks.
"Bitch," he breathes and turns up the radio. Wainwright sings a song
while strumming his guitar, in his nasal twang, "When it's grey

in L.A., I sure like it that way..." "Effing country, all gloom and grey
music, that sh..." Larry starts, but looks at Kel glowing in winter
white shimmer, winter white glory. Humming a new song.
"What the hell...", but his voice whiskers away, falls
into silence, like snowflakes at night. He cracks
his pipe on the counter, sneers, then takes one more blow.

Each bird sings its own song, flies on its own grey wings.
Battered by the blows of wind and the bitter breath of winter,
the timid become lost. Fallen feathers sift between the cracks.

Felicity

Felicity was the girl everyone wanted to pick
on because she was slow that way,
you know what I mean.

And one time, when she was playing
right field, she wet
her pants.

She didn’t yell at us or
anything mean, though she did walk
away crying

her blond hair sticking out
of her head like
straws in a haystack

her nose snotty and red
using her sleeve
for a Kleenex.

How many times had she heard the words,
be a good sport,
so she was.

Felicity was the girl everyone wanted to pick
on.
So we did.

A Writer's Vice

Carol Jean always takes her coffee black
Like the inky sky on a moonless night
Digging in her pocket for a Salem pack
A pair of essentials so that she can write

Like the inky sky on a moonless night
She needs a smoke as well as a lamp
A pair of essentials so that she can write
She scrawls with a writer's cramp

She needs a smoke as well as a lamp
Both burn holes if left forgotten
She scrawls with a writer's cramp
Black words, dark thoughts--all rotten

Both burn holes if left forgotten
The torment of an elusive word
Black words, dark thoughts--all rotten
Stanzas: first, second, then third

The torment of an elusive word
Digging in her pocket for a Salem pack
Stanzas: first, second, then third
Carol Jean always takes her coffee black

Abecedarians

Sibling Rivalry

After begging candy, Deedra E. Freeman got harmfully ill.
"Jeepers, kid. Like, mitigate nauseous old puke," quipped Ruby.
Sister tattled--unfaithful varmit!
What xxxx'ed your zipper?



Space

Alone
Being
Cosmos
Dione
Existence
Fool's Paradise
Godliness
Hole
Infinity
Jetsons
Knot
Lost in
Manned
Nebula
Open
Pica em
Quantum
Room
Spool
Tool
Uncrowded
Vacuum
Wasteland/Wonderland
Xyst
Years
Zero, don't you know how wonderful you are?