Just Desserts

Tarpeia laden
_____platinum-crowned
bejewelled to stooping
_____down, past lupine
eyes, blue and shot through
_____with gray.
In blackness a sound
_____she made
scorched the olive branch
_____clean of peaceful
associations.
_____Fruit and leaf
dropped
_____as roots grieved
myths men ate.

2013

Ochre rail, paint flaking off
red brick_____horsefly
_____hovers
__________thick buzz.
Summer dust
__________still air:
_____the Chinese character
for snake
_____hung there
__________a moment
above the rose,
_____aphid-eaten.
The ideogram disintegrates
__________then rises,
winding up
_____past a copper pipe.

Lobotomy

From behind
_____not the sound
__________of a woman's voice
as he had thought
_____but a kind-looking
__________black man
old and muttering
_____as a red van
__________motors by.

The doctor told
_____his mother
__________what must be done.
He wonders again why --
_____who will he be
__________after?  Will he still
be capable
_____of wonder?
__________Will he be less?

Under the glass
_____were jars --
__________canopic
labelled and full
_____of pharoah parts --
__________all but the brain,
which he'd been taught
_____the Egyptians
__________thought superfluous.

Will she love him more
_____then, when like
__________the blue bowl
on his window sill
_____his head is filled
__________only half
with marbles?  He earned
_____them by cutting grass.
__________Not now; be quiet and still.

Cuz

Cicadas hum,
starlings sing.
_____June heat
__________dry
as the deer skull
peering from beside
_____that rust-mottled truck.
Mid-60s Ford on blocks.
_____Martin kicks stones
__________down the road.
Rancheria dust
__________grass gold.
Grandma alone knows
_____what the old things mean
and why his white father
had to run 40 miles
_____just to go to jail.
Slam the screen door,
_____flip through the mail.
Martin slides the pink slip
_____across the formica
__________table.
_____The principal's
signature signed black.
Dessicated wasps on their backs
_____by the window
behind the dish rack.

View of a Koi Pond

Scarlet peeks out, left breast.
Silk, faintly iridescent.

Susurration: cloth crosses cloth.
Woodsmoke, citrus, musk,

a man's sweat.  Calloused hands
drawn over stone.  Mirrored below,

in the pool, a face.  That face
has never been young nor a fool's.

It's known sin.  Lines years of smiles
carved therein terminate in hooks

at a mouth, thin-lipped.
Two wives in a row, a child.

Nine leaves float, encircle his head:
halo -- autumn crowns him red.

Sawdust

Umbra
_____breathe damp
mulch__________rank
green__________black.

Sequoia_____sundial
_____shadow glides
round clearing, long
__________then short.

Over sorrel, grass.

It stalks night.
Day__________drained:
pint glass a massive hand, scarred,
slams_____back_____down

on the bar.

__________Lumberjack
slumber under stars.
They illuminate nothing.
_____Moonless sky.

Crickets.  Stillness.  A lie:
__________eyes gleam
_______________open
__________upturned.

Exhale.  Droplets --
_____gems_____fern.

Grandmother

Black lacquer box
pink Coty compact
agate_____earring
locket she bought
5 and dime.

She and Aunt Pearl
photographed
_____side by side
black and white_____1955.

Walk through Selma
1965_____contentious
woman_____a look
of the Cherokee
_____about her.

Fur coat, glowworm club.

Did the jazz,
Jelly-Roll Morton
get you off your ass?

Communists, Black Panther kids.

__________Lid
emblazoned with toy
pagoda in gold
willow_____tree
__________river.

She was a giver
of lip, shit-kicker.

Stars never aligned
nor did they fall.