A Girl

Photo by Xianyu hao on Unsplash
A Girl 

A girl knows it is best, 
in the summer,
to be out in the alley
before morning coffee
brings her mother’s grievances
into clear focus. 

A girl hides behind a camellia
bush waiting breathlessly
for her best friend’s brother
who will later
drop a spider down the 
back of her shirt. 

A girl can be bought off for two quarters 
and the promise that the source of
the bruise on her right thigh
will remain a secret.

Through the screen door,
a girl watches Sylvie’s aunt
take a drag off her cigarette
and sigh. 

When a girl is uncertain she makes herself a question.

Published on The Laundry Line June 10, 2025.

under the heat dome

Photo by Christian Deutschland on Unsplash
under the heat dome

there is a Siamese cat
crossing the alley.
he used to be my cat
but he lives with some other woman now.

the moon is also a cat—
round-faced, old-fashioned,
	talkative.

this moon-cat follows me
from room to room
as I wander
in the mid-night.
heat soaks into my body;
curls under my diaphragm;
	tries to suffocate me.

she finds me in my chair
nestles in, will not leave.
as I read, I listen to the moon-cat’s chatter, 
and pray for relief 
in this brutal, new-world August.

Published on The Laundry Line, June 3, 2025.

Ginger

Photo by Ty Feague on Unsplash
Ginger

At the Palacio Municipal, you can pay 
outstanding parking tickets
with counterfeit 20 dollar bills
and frayed-edged loteria cards.

I keep La Sirena for myself
and go out into the rain 
	with only a paper umbrella to 
keep the ghosts out of my ears.
They get in anyway.

In the square
the Independence Youth Orchestra
plays waltzes
	for your wristwatch that keeps
time backwards
	and Ginger Rogers dances
the lead for a change. 

Epitome of everything you mistake for female,
she is actually an avatar of Venus
whose sea foam birth
	was foreseen by the
	side-street organ grinder.

Born Virginia Katherine McMath,
this fecund goddess
	is the queen 
of a girl-crazy, blue-eyed god, 
who creates and destroys
the matter of the universe.

As I walk toward the cathedral,
	your watch, the waltzes, 
	and my paper umbrella
	turn to pink pulp
and shower around my shoulders
like the bougainvillea 
	dropping petals.
I look longingly at a little
	girl's roller skates,
as Ginger Rogers drives by, 
a blue dress flapping from the bumper of her 
	Lincoln. 

Published on The Laundry Line May 27, 2025.

Ode to the Rings of Saturn

Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash
Ode to the Rings of Saturn

What could be
more perfect
than a planet
cradled in the 
arms of its own rings?

A giant bedded
down in the icy
remains of its
once beautiful spouse.

Songless world
belted with the
white track of 
a 30-year storm.

Huge head halo'd
by twirling dust motes
and the bodies
of his children:

O Rhea, O Mimas,
O Titan,
pockmarked beauty—
outpost of man's 
ambitions.

Their shadows stride across 
the face of this world.

Above his shoulder,
an icy crescent,
Tethys rises.

“O” she says, “O”
	and again
	more slowly “O”

“With rings like those
I would never
be alone in the dark.”

Published on The Laundry Line, May 20, 2025.

spark notes — how not to read a poem

Photo by David on Unsplash
spark notes - how not to read a poem

All narrative poems are conflations
of the things that happened to the poet
and stories told by her mother
when the January nights got to be too much.

Do not be misled by the line,
the poet was drunk when she laid it down.

Dogs find the 
classically rigorous poetry 
of the early 19th  century stifling.

Cats, however, relish the constraints
of the Japanese forms.
A haibun will often soothe their
fears of thunder and wild parsley.

Read poetry on an empty stomach, 
to feed your hungry misapprehensions. 

If a poem moves you on a Tuesday, 
revisit it on a Friday 
as the moon rises behind the Nabisco factory;
read it again on Sunday
when you should be in church.
You will not be able to substitute one reading for the other.

Published on The Laundry Line, 14 May, 2025.