Learning

I am learning today
some Arabic words
as I read the Reader's Digest
in the dentist's office, waiting
for my son to have his
teeth examined.

Nadir means lowest point.
The nadir of this day
happened at one o'clock
in the morning when
a high school classmate
fell into the abyss
of cancer.

It's hard to believe, said
her brother-in-law,
thirteen months ago
she was as full of life
as you or I.

Elixir is another
Arabic word. Elixir is a cure-all,
which Lisa never found.
Her husband and children
are learning what
the world now looks like
without her.
I wonder if her youngest
will remember in another
twenty years what
life was like with her.

I reward my son's
cavity-free check-up with
a trip to the History Center.
Lost in the minutae
of Minnesota artifacts,
I learn how Bob Dylan
spent the school year of 1959
to 1960 at the University,
leaving shortly before
Garrison Keillor's four-year
tenure as an undergraduate student.

I am learning what
it feels like to slowly lose
my senior-high friends
like maple leaves
turned early in July, which
float to the ground
at the first of August,
the dog days of summer.

I already knew that
those summer weeks
tagged Dog Days
reference how Sirius, the dog star,
moves into the Northern
hemisphere and within
our scope of nighttime viewing.

I am learning that
Charles Lindbergh,
with all his aviation
glory billowing up
his wings, still preferred
the natural world.
He said, "If I had to choose,
I'd rather have birds than airplanes."

Even as I am learning
all of this, Lisa's spirit
hovers somewhere, not here by me,
but close to her family,
waiting for them each to close
his or her eyes,
to sleep at last after
a long day of crying.

I wonder if there is
anything left for
Lisa to learn. Perhaps
she has, like I, learned
the Arabic word kismet.

Changing a Flat

I grew up believing the world was flat
Have you ever lived in southwestern Minnesota?
You changed my flat world and even more than that

You believed in me, despite my flaws, you didn't bat
Your eye, au contraire, you took me home in your Toyota
Still, I believed the world lay flat

And God would forsake a girl like me who spat
Out profanities and dismissed the Holy Roman rota
But you didn't give up and even more than that

You listened to me when I called to chat
At five in the morning, singing Molly O'Brien's Dakota
Wind, which is a world, I believe, that is flatter than flat

Babe you loved me, you loved me, I couldn't run from that
You shouted your love from the bridge of Mendota
You changed my flat world and even more than that

Let's grow old together, let's sit and get fat
We'll visit Mount Rushmore in South Dakota
And travel the world that's no longer flat
Because you changed my flat world and even more than that.

(I sent this villanelle in for A Prairie Home Companion's love poetry writing contest. I think Garrison was too wowed to read it. What do you think?)

Note to a Friend
(KarenL)

I like to think about you
sitting at home, reading Joel or Corinthians
turning each thin sheet
down for the evening as you climb
into bed
as you climb into the ether
of dreams and desire

I like to think about you
stitching a quilt while
Too-Too and Rascal
climb on your squares
kneading their paws on
freshly stitched muslin
their claws catching and snagging
without care

I'd like to think you
were thinking of me, too
as I sit here empty
waiting for thoughts to fill
my head
and my keyboard
until they flood out onto the screen
making oodles of money
as editors climb over one
another in excitement to be the first
publisher of my next masterpiece.

Penny Caught

This penny wedged between the window sill and pane
Has been painted over twice.
I can tell because the paint's chipped and I see
Two layers: pink then minty green.
No one has opened the window
Since this room was converted
From a ritzy powder room in the 20s
And a lounging room with fainting divan
In the 40s.
Now it is a closet
Where I hang
Myself.

Fibonacci's Numbers Poetry

Fibonacci's sequence of numbers

Here's how this poem format works.
Fibonacci's numbers start like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...The first two numbers were provided, after that, the reader must figure them out. Easy enough in the beginning.
Poems can be any length, but must follow the syllabic count as suggested by Fibonacci's numbers.
Here's one that I pulled from the visual thesaurus, which also provided me with this new way of writing poetry.

Yearn
pine
desire:
how I feel
for the Nintendo
sitting in the Gamestop window.

Now I'll try some of my own:

Some
Times
Only
Hand holding
Will heal the broken
Hearted, the bone weary trav'ler
Who finds the universe an alien oasis
Yet stands beside every other castaway and waves to sweet Jesus, my Nazarene


Je
t'aime
bien
à jamais
parce que je suis libre.
Tu es libre, aussi. S'il tu plaît
m'aimer, mon cher, mon cher. Tu es libre de m'aimer, belle.


Kiss
Hug
Some tongue
Hoping for
Sex in bed tonight
After a full day of foreplay.

The Bike Man

The Bike Man

My gears needed attention
because when I shifted
into sixth, they slipped back
to fourth.

And when I downshifted
to fifth, to compensate,
I ended up spinning
like a rat on a wheel.

Wade hoisted my Schwin
onto the bike lift,
cranking the rubber pedal
while eyeing the chain.

He twisted a silver cap
on the front end cable
then jimmied the bottom bracket
as the brakes were engaged.

Who knew a man named Wade
would know all about the intricate
details of my derailleur,
by only spinning my two wheels.

Who knew a man named Wade
would fix my purple vélo
with nothing more than
a thin gloss of lubricant

stretched between his two fingers
firmly pressed on my clotted chain,
easing deeply into my bearings
until the kink came out.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sex

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sex
A nod to Wallace Stevens

one
Between the flannel fitted and the percale top sheet,
The only moving thing
Was the tip of his finger.

two
I was of two heads
Like the queen
of a porno flick

three
The desire came to me
wrapped in song.
Beyond desire, all else pales.

four
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are kinky.

five
I do not know which to prefer,
The seduction of words
Or the racy taunts of her tongue.
The bed rocking,
Or just after.

sex
Candlelight stabbing the dark
With hallucinating effect.
The bigger the flame,
The longer the objects appear
To be moving to and fro.
Desire burns Without reason.

seven
O card-carrying AARP men,
Why do you imagine trophy wives?
Do you not see how her denied desire
both succeeds and shames you?

eight
I know French accents
And lurid, cabalistic double-stops;
But I know, too,
That desire compels
A fiddler's fingers.

nine
When sex deceives even the simple farmer,
It sets itself up as sinful,
one of seven.

ten
At the sight of her naked body
Tied to the four-poster,
Even Samson handed over
The scissors.

eleven
She rode over him
with her boots on.
Once, he wore his ten-gallon hat
and nothing more.
He received nothing less.

twelve
Desire is mounting,
Sex must be imminent.

thirteen
It was evening all afternoon.
They were sweating
And they were going to sweat.
Replete with desire
and dampened sheets.

Sail Away

I’ve had my ear to the rail for some time now.
Three yards up the line, my sister huddles,
waiting, same as me.

Hearing something
I jerk my head up,
study the horizon.
But, no, it is nothing,
perhaps the whine of an airplane overhead.
My sister clears her throat.

I lay my ear down once more.
The steel rail warm and soothing against my skin.
Its smoothness is like a sharp, sharp blade,
ready to slice a tomato.

Now I hear rumbling.
Under the palm of my hand, vibration.
With my head on the trestle,
I see a plume of white, smoky steam
unfurling in the sky.
A finger pointing,
but not at me.

The vibrato becomes a shuddering.
The grumble, a roaring.
I crouch,
horrified and immobile.

With a scream, the locomotive is upon me,
shaking me senseless like dice in a cup.

Yet it misses me,
as if I were invisible.

I sit up after the last car passes,
watching my sister as she sails away,
her brown hair laughing with the wind.

---------------------------------------

I thank Bruce Molsky for off-site inspiration with his version of the old-time tune, Sail Away. No one sings it like Bruce.

Finding Joy

One of these mornings,
she won't wake up.
Sometime at night
when stars are shining,

the half-moon high,
she will take her last breath,
shallow and light,
skimming the surface of air.

Her eyes will flutter,
she will see moonlight
bathing the living room--
her fleeting hospice,

washing her lover's face with shadow
as he waits supine on the sofa.

Her lungs will deflate,
leaking out into space.
The gravity of breathing
no more

will not be lost on her.
Nothing can dull
her brightness.
Her chest

will weigh down on her
squeezing and squeezing
like the first time
when the womb birthed her
into this world.

Soon she will be wrung
out of this life
and into another.

A vastness
she does not remember.

I Shall Not See Her Again In This Light

In the beginning, it was like any other month,
but there were missing figures on the ledger where
the facts should have been. And her fingers
curled clumsily when she stretched to pull
the chain while turning on her bedside light,
which was needed to warm up from the rain.

November in Kansas still brings rain.
It’s funny that way, how the month
is still changing over to snow, and the light
fades to almost nothing. She wonders where
it’s gone--her brain has a hard time trying to pull
up facts and sort reality with cold, cramped fingers.

And that’s just it. It was the tremor in her fingers
that betrayed her, not the limp or the rain.
Though my mother said it hurt like hell to watch her pull
her left leg around like a lame dog that’s been leashed for a month
to the back of the shed, baying at the moon, where
were the owners, couldn’t they have left on a light?

By January, solstice returns the light
illuminating her bare head and boney fingers.
And the question of treatment no longer centers on where,
but how much more? We wonder if she’ll hold on until the rain
falls again in spring. We stop counting each month
and begin numbering weeks as we feel the moon’s pull

strengthening its grip. We watch the pull
tab on her zipper pinch sagging skin leaving her light
headed and gasping. It’s the last month
I see her with moving lips and fingers.
From the south, clouds again move in to rain
on our cap-less heads as we wander aimless, to nowhere.

April holds no refuge. There is no where
to run to avoid this dizzying pain, the pull
to wrap up in fantasy falls like rain.
Each new day is one step closer to her celestial light.
She listens to father murmuring “Hail Mary, full of grace…” as he fingers
his rosary, begging the Blessed Virgin to end this month.

Sunlight follows rain. And though she doesn’t know where,
in this new month, she accepts the sempiternal pull
toward the light and spreads her arms and fingers.