set
where she and her sisters sat for life
waiting for the maid to light the fire.
I watch the sun touch the carpet square
as it did in her day at the same hour,
waiting boxed in her house, hard-pressed
against the tenements, even
the Ladies’ Mile gone, a thread pulled uptown.
The tourists depart. The house hunches,
its fanlight flutters, its pillars brace
like shoulders tensed above the street.
It is the hour for Gertrude to appear
and wait with me until it’s time
to close the shutters and take in the sign.
We sit, straight backs scarcely touching
our chairs, two ladies about to disappear
like the house, holding tight
to our consequence, despite
accumulating evidence.
Feast of St. Phillip
Fellow literalist, your doubt
about the loaves and fishes
always comforted me.
When you responded to His return
from death with your
over-the-top request to see more
and were rebuked—
Don’t you know me?—
you had my sympathy.
Maybe knowing Greek got you in.
God knows how you translated
what you could scarcely understand,
but God, we’re told, draws straight
with crooked lines, a relief to us both,
good with words, but at the wrong times.
Hear my prayer, Philip,
fifth of the twelve. Your gaze suggests
disquiet can be stilled.
Aubade
“Modern longevity . . . .presents a new challenge to marriage.”
I would like to march downstairs where you are eating Cheerios
and watching the NBC Morning News to inform you that
an out-of-tune crow is terrorizing the neighborhood.
As you grind your coffee beans, I would like to remark that
the rain keeps promising a comeback then sighs
and disappears behind a cloud cover.
I would like to ask you, What’s up? Does that crow have a hook in its gut?
His situation seemed dramatic, but the other crows only croak nownownow,
as you’ve been known to do.
Whitman’s widowed mocking-bird mourned his mate in melody,
and the swan’s cry of loss moved Valmiki to lyric poetry,
but right now I could be that crow causing a ruckus,
and I’d like to ask you, what about this?
The Boxer at the Met
The artist limed his wounds with care
and swelled his cauliflower ear.
It’s a brief interval between bouts.
He looks back. Who’s out?
Resting his elbows on his knees,
hunching, bulky, an abject beast.
Once people stroked his feet for luck,
leaving the unguent of their touch.
Invaded, Romans buried him deep.
Dirt chewed him brown and verdigris.
Now he’s earth and art enmeshed,
his bronze friable as flesh.
Around him, the standing statues pose
silent as stone dolls,
But this one crouching, close to defeat,
suffering, seems to speak.
Retiring the Red Pen
I no longer got their jokes. I confused Celina with Cecily and Selin,
Sean and Shané, Jane and Janay, Jenna and Jana.
There was a year when Sofia, Safyah, and Susa sat together.
Liam, Ian, Nina, Lena, Liana. Two Mildreds and an Azalea.
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