Pasquale

Groceries

New coconut oil

on the fridge, sweet potatoes

behind the trash bin

For A.B. & A.B.

Finite Drama

I’m an audience to myself.
My self, performing.
Spectators,
their own self-theaters,
to themselves, performing.

Rugs

Oriental rugs

Underfoot in living rooms

They’re not religious

For M.B.

Pseudo

See from behind closed eyes.

Take the ceiling off the sky.

Our planets rest not in mural,

painted on veiled walls,

but drift endlessly suspended

like tennis balls

bound in chain link fence matrixes

landing there by the foul serves

of children’s pickup games.

Appointment

Blinding morning sun

An exhausting Odessey

I’ve arrived early

Bride

Ever since seeing

her emptiness draped in white

I’ve no worthy touch

–

Dedicated to The Mother, Gratitude

Hugo

Ice cream man screams through

frozen dew, icy grass hue

goes down through hemp fields

For Hugo

Fall Memory

Late fall on the ridge across the river

Wading through a forest floor of fallen leaves

Watching the naked canopies

sew their last stitches

in her winter quilt

Each step releasing summer’s stored sound and smell

Each step experiencing the depth of gentleness in which each leaf fell

Bad Listener

Throw listening to the wolves.

A word, shattered

by the orders of our keepers

by the brows of our parents.

Heal the times in your heart,

where sentence separated from song,

when canon confused with command.

Does rhetoric require relationship with rushing reactivity?

Your ticket to the symphony has been redeemed.

The players performance practiced,

program pamphlets printed.

Will you attend?

Friends Are Home

Sometimes I wish my home was not as rooted as me.

I adjust the temperature of my cheeks.

You, descendant of Aphrodite are illuminated

as I could ever be, and as human as I could never be.

A Poetry Magazine writing prompt from the June 2022 edition of Poetry Magazine.

For M. M.