Patina
The wife doesn’t sleep with him anymore
because he wavers, like candlelight—his
chest a rattling fer-de-lance as he calls Dora
Dora Dora—74 years old and still dreaming
about his mother all the long night long.
The wife’s content on a sofa more restful
than any bed she’s ever shared. She loves
the cool of its let’s pretend they’re queen-sized
sheets; the way moonglow slants its patina
at 1:42 am; loves how, finally, she is alone.
Their Shih Tzu barks his dreams of bones
because he is used to their arrangement.
Their spinster daughter, who has returned
home, again, understands less than a little.
Comes the dawn and the wife attends
to modest duties: the husband’s breathing
apparatus in need of its regular click—
the dog scratching to be let outdoors, sniffing
after an old bloodhound who will never sniff
after him (both dogs piddle on a neighbor’s
shrub of rosemary)—their daughter sent off
to a futile profession not nearly as hard as this.
Blueprint
This girl with my blood in her veins has a different design for her life than the one I once drew for her. A Tutankhamen tattoo is inked into her upper arm. On her toes, sporty hydrangea blue. A bee stings her tongue with a golden stud and when she prays, I sing spiritu sancto in a dead language. My maple’d violin she doesn’t love. She doesn’t love my turkey pot pies. She loves any street locked with a universal key. She takes her tokes. She doesn’t exhale. It’s all within her and all I’ve got is a short road. She’s got a flood and the ways she knows to ride it.
Time & Want
You don't want to think it was you. You want to think
you were kind when you had to be; that you were more
supple in bed than a serpent when he was your shiny
apple. You want to say he mumbled when spoken to but
waxed eloquent making vulgar jokes about your mother.
You need your gals-pals to loathe him twice as much as
you do. You would love to sweet baby love some heart-
stopping hunk o’ hunk as soon as possible but you fear
that idea is the most improbable of all. You want to two-
step in a shower of fireflies so everyone thinks you are lovely
and always will be. You never want to get out of your bed.
Just there, you stare at ants on the march on your window
sill. Each one who isn't queen has her task to complete, time
and again, and when she fails, she's cast from the settlement.
