Chains, Kisses, and Shakespeare:
Appearances in the Throes of May

From the orbs of May, the disconsolate
roll in too. With jagged, fierce ribs
they roam air newly adorned

in the breath-taking silkiness
of their own demise. Fie, a challenging,

gleeful destruction. Wiles of curvy
wisteria in the woods, straight up and savvy,
wrap broad trunks, drape lacy,

lavender chains all about, softly
trick and deceive. Who would ever dream

diaphanous beauty, left to roam, would
in time drop her devil kisses, suck
every wisp of air from all the lungs

of one-hundred, dare-you-to trees?
But it’s true----when the director asks

if you’d read Maria, in Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night. And you feel up to it,
the heart pumping in jubilation

with the chance to arrange/disarrange
a romance or two, to torment in

the comedic process, ah yes, to torment,
you see, it’s hard trying to be good
all the time, and besides, it’s only play.

Your tail thumps at the sound
of my voice. Your ears perk
when I walk across the room.
Am I coming to feed you?

They warned me you’d be trouble,
you and your endless cravings,
yes, and your needs—food, water,
trips outside where you still

spring at every squirrel you see.
I tell you you’ll never catch one.
Give it up, will you? You won’t.
Discouragement isn’t in your language

of longing, lunging, lunging. You can’t stop
believing fulfillment is right around the
next tree. Then again, now that I think of it,
it’s the running headlong toward

what you want that you love, thrusting
each ounce of flesh and fur into
the chase, joy bristling, leaping across yards.
The brisk satisfaction with which

you trot at the end of your leash! 
Are you never weary of the world?
How many times has your nose nudged
me from the cocoon of my bed, where

I lie steeped in the latest loss or failure,
out into the sun? You make no apologies
for your appetite. You’re not too proud
to beg. There’s no need, your open mouth

tells me, to feel any shame. Oh, Desire,
I don’t care what they say
about your dirty paws, the mess you left
on the carpet, you’re a good dog.

You smell differently today.

You taste like bark
                                                         and all I want is for you to be French.
What happened to the old you?
Strong,
              bold,
                            and only bitter
until I splashed something cold on your neck.

I want that back.

Instead, I’m looking into a dark hole of grime,
a weak-smelling brew only soldiers could muster.

Smell me,
yeah, me.
I’m just a civilian, 
                                                          more of a Joe than you’ll ever be.

Let’s switch clothing. I’m warm.

Now look at yourself,
you barely steaming,
                                                           impotent excuse for caffeine.
Cover yourself up. Get a little sweeter while you’re at it.

Is that so difficult?

I can see your remnants on the side of the cup—
                                                           it isn’t a good look for you.
Put a suit on for goodness sake.

I get it, really,
                                                          I get it. It’s fine; I get it.
I don’t get it.

For an hour, my lips have rested on your cup,
and all you’ve become is
                                                              weaker,
and less attractive.

Like my last relationship.

Only it was less dull.

my mother took out
walnuts and chocolate
chips. My sister and
I plunged our fingers
in flour and butter
smoother than clay.
Pale dough oozing
between our fingers
while the house filled
with blond bars rising.
Mother in her pink dress
with black ballerinas
circling its bottom
turned on the Victrola,
tucked her dress up into
pink nylon bloomer pants,
kicked her legs up in the
air and my sister and I
pranced thru the living
room, a bracelet around
her. She was our Pied
Piper and we were
the children of Hamlin,
circling her as close as the
dancers on her hem

_________________________

Fiction & Poetry Editor Nicole Gause and Director of Video Donald Devet have teamed up to present four outstanding poems in celebration of National Poetry Month. Alongside the written word, Donald has produced a short visualization of each poem marrying image, sound and word.

See,
He could only speak in the dialect of the dead.

Speak in the tongue of the destined demise of everything around
him,
He spoke death in every word he said
sharing the same with me as well.
Adopting corpses as the most sincere and meaningful
aspects of life.
It puzzled me of how death was not only in the power in his tongue
but the only tongue he knows.
He only knew to soothe me with the scent of formaldehyde,
embalming fluid and soap suds.
He only knew to teach me lessons
and make me feel better by showing a corpse to me
that he reminded me “that could be you”.

The sight of corpse staring at me with closed eyes haunts me at
night before closing eyes at night
off-spring sprung from mom and he,
I only resembled death and demise to him --
the only matters in his life,
for life lives such, no more in he.
And black roses and daisies bloom in his springless gloom

The look in his eyes spoke only death and hate
In his conversations, in countless symposiums of death---
being you guessed it,
the featured topic.
I only wished,
desired even that for once, he would simply LIVE.

To embrace life if only for a moment
AND
              breathe the breath of life 
             consume the stifle stench of death- no more.

bitter taste of death’s dismal doom of black gory,
the gothic spirit of evil spirits of God’s greatest enemy.

him, an entity to strengthen my faith, perhaps
hold my arms wide open to hug life with love and kiss optimism
on the cheeks.

My love somehow worries in oasis the canteen of happiness,
hoping, peace will fill his threshold as he sips salvation perhaps …
swallow the love of himself and for once to truly see himself
and allow the past to die simply so he can –LIVE.

I wish it could have been just about the carpet.

The fluorescent, pea-green shag 

that crept, a persistent moss, 

throughout our house.

I got lucky that summer.

The dog started it--a blessed 

and passionate fit of excited digging. 

Tearing at its chartreuse flesh,

filleting the hallway, 

Rollins didn’t know any better, I said.

He wanted only to play with Niko, 

our dog-hating cat.

But when you returned home, so glad to see our driveway 

after three days of backseat sleep,

continental breakfasts

and press conferences,

My audacity seemed to have struck a nerve.

Apparently you’d bought the house because of that carpet.

And suddenly 

it was

about the carpet.

Like a temple offering,

rice, couscous, vegetables, 

fruit we have brought to share.

In the center, a circle of pizza,

the entire universe.  On his plate 

a single slice.   Too many 

memories fill us;  the future’s 

too much to swallow;

             when a Buddhist eats, he eats.

Shaven head bowed 

over his meal, he chews

slowly as you would expect,  

silence vast as miles 

to the mountains of Tibet,

maroon robes spilling

as he rises. 

         When he carries his plate 

          he carries his plate.

We sit awhile speaking 

few words into the distance

between us:  language, beliefs,

elevation.    Before our meal

his deep chanting hummed 

the room, rumbled inside me. 

A finger brown as cinnamon

points to a postcard.  Lhasa. 

           When he waits, he waits

as one beneath the bodhi tree, 

patient refugee who can’t go home.

Where is home for anyone? 

I want to embrace him 

but hold only the light 

of his dark eyes, the mystery. 

           When he smiles, he smiles.

_________________________

Fiction & Poetry Editor Nicole Gause and Director of Video Donald Devet have teamed up to present four outstanding poems in celebration of National Poetry Month. Alongside the written word, Donald has produced a short visualization of each poem marrying image, sound and word.

The red barn

darkened by the storm

becomes cold and heavy 

as the wood is soaked with the weight of the rain.

Fog sits

preventing breath.

Long after the rain

a dewdrop still remains and slowly

cascades

down the maze of a spider’s web

and  lingers  on  the  gnarled  wood of the barn   a   while

like a consequence

clinging to a groove in the knotted wood  

refusing to let go.

Creamy morning light embraces

                                                                     the red barn.

The blue bird serenades.

The creek ripples with wisdom.

At last a gentle breeze lulls the dewdrop away.

A new day is made

and the light paints the barn a new shade -

with forgiveness.

He didn't reveal himself, not even for his own edification, the mask that presented muslin-like cover was for those who thought they knew him. The soldier's camouflage allowed everyone to stay on social script.

Planned developments have garages in the back, hasty retreat and advance protected by the Genie Automatic, come and go and go and come, waving is optional.

Most did indeed find comfort in social conventions and niceties. He was not comforted by the persona he had become, but rather hidden from the glare that inevitably followed those who failed to assimilate and adhere to societies rhythms.

He needed others to bring out who lay there, underneath his growing thick veneer. He needed, demanded actually, foils to help shape his own thinking. Books are great and the net is infinite, but they don't challenge your rationale or thinking or make you defend your values or define your humanity.

He couldn't find those courageous enough to make the first move, and he was paralyzed himself; the vapors of what coursed through his mind escaped unchallenged, unseen and unheard, falling like swallows on their final migration.

They had drinks and dinners and went to their kids’ plays and sang in the church choirs, they lived next door and took in each other’s mail.

He didn't know any of them any better than he knew himself.

The last time a turtle crossed
my path--Cape Cod, a decade
ago, a drive on Route 6
from Truro to  Provincetown
with Rose, my childhood friend,
who screeched her Saab to a stop,
swung it around, pulled behind
the slow moving tortoise. 

It was snapping, she said,
climbing back into the driver seat,
described how she lifted the turtle
from each side of its ridged shell,
placed it behind a sandy hump
of dirt, shielded the animal
from the speeding traffic.

Turtle: the oldest symbol for planet
Earth…a fine teacher of the art
of grounding.

Today another turtle crosses
my path, I stop alongside two
small girls and their father. He
points out no ridges, no snapping. 

The creature maneuvers away
from the sand and water left
behind, waddles to the edge
of the woods, pushes its head
into a mound of dried leaves,
without a ruckus disappears.

I don’t want to see a photo of the albino moose, 

another e-mail ornament to lure me away 

from finishing the novel I’m reading 

or searching for receipts for H&R Block. 

I don’t want to open another warning 

about cocoa mulch that kills pets 

or read another alarm about micro-waved 

hot water blowing up in a man’s face. 

Not even the tea bag is safe. 

I scan poems from The Writer’s Almanac

in search of something worth gleaning. 

By the 25th line of scrolling 

Jim Harrison’s “Cold Poem,” 

I am entangled with the last lines

where the poem blows its nose and admonishes: 

Lift up your dark heart and sing a song about 

how time drifts past you like the gentlest, almost 

imperceptible breeze. 

It troubles me—that part about the breeze— 

enough to make me click on Save and sneeze.

Inspired by a painting of Christopher Myers

It's always the same. 

She raises the window,

studies the street, then disappears.

She comes back with a stool, a worn wooden one.

She sits so still people on the street

don't even notice her nor that moment

when a person  can be where they are not,

where they can

imagine 

even when everything around them is loud and red 

and purple and people are busy getting 

where they are going and chaps are yelling 

back and forth  while horns blow cusses and 

music.  

It must be nice to feel the yellow of the sun

and forget the food that needs cooking, forget 

the dishes that need washing, forget 

the kids that need teaching, 

floors that need scrubbing

the man that needs loving,

and the woman he's been seeing.

And ain't it something how easy 

he goes to her and then comes  home,

as easy as blood traveling 

back through the heart.

How he still  kisses her at the door

and the woman is forced not to smell him.

No, 

she is forgetting  the girl, 

who lived  on the 12th floor,

the one with  more dreams than talent. 

The one that married a man

like her man, the kind that offers a wicked love 

the kind you can't and won't live without 

but one morning that girl stepped outside 

the window and off the earth. 

Or better yet, the woman in the window

 is just feeling the breeze

and how nice it is to have time to think

on how some things are always the same.

In the house down the street

A sweet buzzing alarm awakes a child 

She showers, allowing the warm water to dribble over her shoulders

She dries off with a clean, thick, cotton towel

She eats a full nutritious breakfast

She gathers up her month-old school backpack

Her mother whispers sweetly in her ear, “I love you”

She rides the school bus 20 minutes to school 

She skips to class, holding hands with her BFF

Volunteers join the teacher in the busy organized classroom

After several hours, the child eats her nutritious lunch that was packed by her mom

She returns gleefully to class 

After school, she goes to sports practice

Tired but happy, she carpools home and eats a full nutritious dinner

She completes her homework before dinner (with a little bit of parental help)

She uses her 30 minutes of allowed computer time to play games on her laptop

She listens to her ipod through the pretty pink earbuds she got last week

Her mother whispers sweetly in her ear, “I love you”

Her father rough-houses with her and then reads her bedtime stories 

She is asleep by 10 and wears a happy serene look on her face

She has double bed with polka dot sheets that match her curtains

Her home is a comfortable temperature

The electricity bill is paid

Her sheets are crisp and clean

Her fleece polka dot pajamas fit well

She lays her head on two new fluffy pillows with cases that match her duvet cover

She receives lots of hugs and pecks on the cheek 

Her parents both work but at least one is home at dinner time

Her family has at least one car

She never rides public transportation unless it is a fun ride on the light rail 

Her parents are married, live in the same house, and both have college degrees

They have insurance and she has an annual physical and semi-annual dentist appointments 

She is always on time to school and never gets sick

She is valued and she knows it

She is loved and she knows it

She is smart and she knows it

She is driven and determined and she knows it

She is content and full 

She will go to college and she knows it

She will live her dreams and she knows it

In the house on the other side of town

Sun slips mightily through the uncovered window

A child awakes to the noise of her 6 siblings getting dressed

She has no soap and does not take a shower or even wash her face

She puts on unwashed, high-water, fitted jeans 

She devours dry sugar cereal from a box, leaving her dish and spoon in the sink

She gathers up her heavy purse, laden with books and other stuff

There is no adult at home to say the magic words

She walks to the light rail alone and steps aboard hoping no one will ask for her ticket because she has no money in her pocket

She catches the city bus to school

She is late and rushes in to explain that the bus broke down

There are no volunteers in her classroom

After several hours, she nibbles and picks at an unappetizing school lunch while her stomach growls

She returns to class tired and her headache won’t go away

She catches the bus and light rail home and eats cheetos for dinner

She tries to do her homework but she doesn’t have a computer or dictionary to find the definitions she needs and no one in her house knows the answers

She turns on the television and gets comfortable on the stained couch

She argues with her siblings about what show to watch

Her mother goes to work, again

Her mother’s boyfriend leaves the house, smoking and drinking and looking for dope

She rough-houses with her brother and she scratches his face (on purpose)

They watch television until they fall asleep on the couch at midnight

She has no bed or bedroom 

In the winter, they heat the house with the oven

Some months the electricity bill is paid

She has no sheets

She wears her clothes to “bed”

She lays her head on a dirty sweater as she sleeps

Occasionally, her mom tells her she loves her

Her mom works two shifts and isn’t home much

Her family does not have a car

She always rides public transportation 

Her parents never married, never lived in the same house, and never graduated from high school

She is on medicaid insurance but never goes to the doctor or dentist 

She frequently misses school for headaches and there is no advil in the house

She is valued but doesn’t know it

She is loved but doesn’t know it

She is smart but doesn’t know it

She is sometimes driven and determined but doesn’t know it

She is surviving 

She wants to go to college but doesn’t think she will

She wants to have time for dreaming but doesn’t 

One city

Two worlds

Can your warm heart hold the darkness away?

There is a place on the way that stays open late. Coffee. Sandwiches. Candy. Whatever you need: overpriced and convenient like a gas station for pedestrians. You fill up quick, and go on your way.

“You look for something particular?”

“Sandwiches. You got any sandwiches?”

“No more. All gone. Something else?”

Sandwich and a coffee, but there’s no point in the coffee till I have the sandwich to go with it. At least that’s the logic after a late night at the office.

“You know where I can get a sandwich around here?”

“I don’t know. Why not something else? Instant soup. You use the microwave.”

“Forget it.” The last thing I need at this hour is a salt bath.

On the way to my apartment, I pass beneath a row of neon signs that remind me of autumn leaves in the suburb of my childhood. Only the liquor being advertised costs more than the dew on the leaves that I used to reach for when I was a kid. I guess that’s the price you pay for growing up. Or maybe just something to think about over a drink.

I pull out a bill as I enter the bar. The place is empty, but for a crowd in the corner, and I order a double before taking my stool. The crowd of regulars sits mostly in the dark, drinking more than talking. They’re probably what allows the place to stay open late on a Monday.

“Here you go,” the bartender says, leaving the bourbon in a snifter on a napkin and my change off to the side. Normally I’d push a heavy tip to the back of the counter because I’m a light drinker. But I’m thinking of staying a while, so he’ll have to settle for a single.

No one at the bar on a Monday night is there to talk, and I don’t feel like forcing conversation on the bartender. I make do with the bourbon and my thoughts.

By the time I reach my second double, not living up to the expectations of the snifter, no patience for aroma, I recall the leaves from when I was a kid. I can see them shiny and just out of reach. My feet are always bare in the grass, and I’m on the tip of my toes trying to reach one of the limbs. When I get hold of one, I pull it down and stretch to meet it halfway.

On my third drink, I’m having a hard time restraining myself from dipping an index finger into my shot glass. If that’s not bad enough, I start feeling guilty as if I’d been telling a woman at the bar about licking the dew of a leaf just to sound like a romantic. What’s worse is I can’t remember whether the whole thing with the leaf ever happened. Whether there ever was a home in the suburbs. Or whether I’ve just been spending a lot of late nights walking back from the office without ever getting closer to home.

I come back to stand in front 

Of the upper barn, again and again 

Even though the wood splinters 

And the paint is all gone, 

The sun glints off the metal roof 

Bright, as it always did. 

There’s still hay in the loft and swallows 

That nest in the rafters. 

And the door’s still here too – 

The little one, up high, on the side 

That Mother wouldn’t let me near. 

Some days, you propped it open 

And tossed fresh bales to the ground 

You made everything look easy, even the end. 

Twelve years dead but you 

Stay fresh in my head. 

I remember the jump, your jeans, 

And the boots on your feet. 

You leapt and landed 

Firm, knees bent from the impact 

You stood up and smiled: a superhero at sixteen. 

“Did it hurt?” 

“Nah,” you said, “wasn’t no big thing.”

Sensual but pure

in your white 

allure, not dependent

on sweet smell.

Long slender stalk,

bean-like buds

to watch unfold,

and one could make a bet

how long you’ll last—

indirect sunlight, you sit

in my sunroom

shaded by trees,

your shadow against 

the blinds—double life—

beauty and darkness.

I looked forward to those mornings when 

My mother, perched at the top of the stairs, would scream 

Jehovah’s! Get Down! 

Born too late  

for the Cold war, 

it was the closest I’d ever  

get to replicating “duck and cover.” 

My child wasn’t old enough to play the  

Cold war game, so I always opened the door. 

Monica and Pernice and I sipped coffee. 

I got Splenda packets the day before,  

Pernice doesn’t take sugar. 

Every Wednesday we three had our little 

Bible study. We would eat scones and sip coffee and we’d 

talk about God and what a good friend he is,  

such a good friend we don’t have to just call him God, 

we can call him by his first name.  

I once belonged to a Pentecostal Church. 

Saturday nights I would actually pray.  

My head tilted in reverence, hands clasped  

tight, I would ask that someone speak in tongues, 

reassuring God it shouldn’t be me.

is a night on the couch in front of the TV, 

as Rachel Ray tosses together thirty minute 

Good Eats, where pop-eyed news pundits 

play reality game show host, or a funny fat man 

on cat’s feet quips his sexy but loud and nasally 

wife, or the tale of a girl who plays patty-cake 

with the ghost of her stepmom. A poem 

is Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells finessing 

a phrase, the cadence of Bela Lugosi’s soliloquy 

or Joan Crawford’s icy cold revenge— 

the screech and crash, Bang, Boom POW 

of a War of the Worlds, as politicians wrangle

to take liberties with Miss Information, 

and scandal is the Talk Soup d’jour. A poem 

is media pimps tricking out cheeseburgers 

and fries to sell kids sex, and pornography 

defines the First Amendment. A poem 

is a dark screen and a twirling blue circle of light, 

spinning me off to bed—where the story lines 

are rounded up, shaken down and cleaned off.

Eighteen nieces and nephews 

show up at my front door, large 

brown carton in tow, 

four oldest hold each corner. 

They heard me, when I said 

they’ll take me out in a box. 

But I’m not going anywhere. 

I’m dying here. 

The one who lived with us 

during the building of this house 

speaks in a firm voice, “Aunt G, 

get in. We’re taking you to 

the nursing home.” I look 

the other way. I’ve made it clear, 

this is where I’m dying. 

In the back of the pack, 

my youngest sibling, nineteen 

years my junior, cups her hand 

on the ball of a cane, shakes 

her head, refuses to look 

me in the eye, mumbles, 

“Good luck getting her out.” 

I’ll be a bear, I swear. No one 

will move me from my den. 

The one child of eight my mother 

said would never leave home, 

and I’ve lumbered up and down 

the east coast, lived in upstate 

& western New York, Boston, 

St. Louis, the Carolinas, back north 

to Cape Cod, then south again 

before building three more houses. 

Ten homes in thirty years. 

Scrambling, sorting, dumping, 

phoning, scheduling, packing, 

arranging, organizing is enough 

to dig a deep dark cave, burrow 

in, hibernate like a grizzly 

in winter, hope I’ve completed 

every detail required to shift 

a life from one home to another 

for the last time. Have I made 

myself clear. I am dying here.

Harvey fed two successive dollar bills into the stout, robotic ticket machine. He punched his stubby, sausage-like digit at the menu choices. Senior. Round Trip. $1.50. Buy. Two shiny quarters and his light-rail ticket plopped into the slot.

At fifty-two Harvey was eight years shy required of the discount he’d just obliged himself of. Beating the Transit Authority out of a buck was the furthest thing from his mind. Rather, this small societal infraction was a type of psychic balm for Harvey. His petty misdemeanor returned a tiny sense of control and dignity to a man who’d long ago been stripped of both. Caustic erosion of ordinary ate at Harvey’s fortitude like molten lava spewing from the volcanic average. He couldn’t bear to be compliant in every last action of his life. The purloined train ticket was Harvey’s last stand, his Alamo.

Far from malevolent, Harvey was a portrait of convention to all who might notice. He maintained a tidy lawn that perfectly framed his suburban rambler.  Citronella scented geraniums lined his window boxes. He often chatted with his mailman, even knew his kids’ names. Harvey paid his taxes, voted in every election including the municipal ones, and was a generous tipper at the Big View Diner where he always sat in the corner booth and ordered an egg -beaters omelet with dry wheat toast.

The sense of exuberance and adrenaline rush accompanying the anticipation of getting caught motivated Harvey to get out of bed on work days. It made him feel alive. Daily, he rehearsed in his mind what he’d say and exactly how he’d react when challenged by some beefy transit cop. They were the type of men Harvey thought he could have been. They wore shades even if it was cloudy. They made their own decisions. They didn’t sit in cubicles waiting to be told what to do and how to do it. They had independence, something Harvey aspired to have.

Consumed by the fantasy playing on his mind’s super-eight twice each weekday, the lies he imagined grew more outlandish. He’d been given the ticket by a friend, he’d say. He didn’t know the age was sixty, he’d been told it was fifty. The ticket machine miscalculated. He pushed the wrong button.

For forty minutes every Monday through Friday, his blood-pressure soared like a thermometer in July. His senses became more acute. The aroma of yeast rolls from the bakery they passed along the way was that much stronger, pure heaven.

Two or three times a week, he was asked to produce his ticket. To Harvey’s great disappointment, not once in two years had the transit cops so much as questioned him.

They would though, maybe even on the very next ride.

Harvey would be ready.

This morning some bird sending 

me a message through the still dark 

while the full moon casts its shadow. 

First traffic on the main road 

out to where the goat stays in 

when it rains, and I look for the donkey 

who lies down with the cows. 

The season is about to change, 

and the leaves we always bring Mom 

to see, though no longer for her 

in full-color, those once brilliant blue eyes. 

When we last sat outside I asked 

if she saw the fireflies. Yes, she said, 

when they light up. 

I thought time could be contained, 

like those insects I captured as a child 

long before there was a replica 

for everything, the real pinned down. 

A large stained glass dragonfly 

in a shop, some net-like covering 

to imagine lift and flutter. 

I’m the goat, Capricorn, clinging 

to earth and do not desire 

my ashes to sink in water, though the miniature 

boat my friend built for the seaman 

was beautiful aflame, the sail tilting. 

I think often of death—Mom 

with her damaged lung, how a butterfly 

closes one wing over the other. 

Take the day and all the little quotes 

on how to live it. At the window, a plastic flower 

reacting to solar power so there’s always 

movement unless fog moves in here 

which it frequently does.

Ellen Morris glanced at the bedroom mirror and sighed “Mother was right. I’m not much to look at.” She was beginning to lose hope. It had been a year since she had torn up her list, “Things I Expect in a Husband,” and replaced it with a small note she had placed on the refrigerator. It read, “He must be kind.”

Ellen moved from the mirror and glanced outside. It was raining. Hard. Still, it was Friday, and if she was ever going to nab a man Friday night was her best chance. “To hell with Evelyn Harris,” she muttered as she walked quickly to the bed-room closet and searched for the perfect outfit. “Let her stay home because of a little rain. We’ll see who ends up the old maid.”

Taking a final look in the bedroom mirror, she walked to the front door, unlocked it and made her way outside. It had stopped raining. The city had come to life. Everywhere she glanced, young couples held hands or pushed carriages with the most adorable babies. Her heart ached. Their lives seemed so full, so rich, while hers had become an unending succession of weekends alone or bar-hopping with Evelyn. Why couldn’t she find someone and join the parade?

When she arrived at the front door of Chico’s, she took a deep breath before entering. It was still early. The bar was empty except for a man sitting at the bar having a beer and talking sports with the barman. Ellen took a seat a few places down. Desperate times demanded desperate measures.

“They should have traded Davis a year ago,” the man said.

The barman nodded wearily.

“We could have gotten something for him then.” He waved a hand in disgust. “Look at him. We’ll be lucky if we can give him away.”

Ellen glanced at the television and sighed. The game had just started. It wouldn’t be over for hours. She reached into her pocketbook, took out a compact, and glanced in the mirror. She did not like what she saw. She did not remember having so many wrinkles.

The man was still talking to the barman. She turned her head slightly to get a better view. He’s not exactly handsome. Still, he’s not ugly either. Not so ugly you’d be afraid to be seen with him. Go to dinner or a show with. None of her friends had married handsome men anyway. She hardly noticed anymore. All she remembered was how elegant they looked Saturday nights, arm in arm with men who held doors, hailed cabs - smiled at all the right times.

She reached in her purse and pulled out a wallet. Well, she thought, here goes. “A vodka martini, please. No ice. One olive.”

The barman nodded and stooped to retrieve a bottle.

The man at the bar turned towards her and smiled. Ellen smiled back. She called to the barman.“Excuse me.”

The barman lifted his head.

“Make that two olives”

The man at the bar shook his head side to side. “That martini is on me.”

Ellen pulled back the chair next to her and patted the seat. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “You’re very kind.”

For: David Clifford Ferdon

Out in the backyard

Of my Grandparent’s house,

There stands an old-

Fashioned clothesline connected

To two well loved, 

Rusted-over poles. 

Sometimes, I would play 

Through the piles of laundry;

The cliché white sheets,

My grandfather’s bleached handkerchiefs,

(But no monogram

For this grease monkey),

And what my grandfather called

His “holy” shirts;

Frayed to death

At the seam, he would always

Try to feed me a bit

Of religious jargon 

With this saying,

But I knew even as a child

They were only the shirts

He wore to work on cars. 

The last time I visited

The poles were still there,

The clothesline barely 

Hanging on, kind of how

I saw my grandfather’s 

Magenta colored legs

Wrapped up in terry cloth

Like some old battle wound. 

As my brother and I sat

And talked with the old man,

I could hear the desert air sway

The line. It was a twinge,

Like the delicate pluck

Of a five string banjo;

A warning sign 

That it was about

To break. 

Hi, you don’t know me, but

I’m driving behind your flatbed truck,

here on I-77 North. That’s

what I would say, to start.Trouble is,

I don’t have your cell phone number.

Don’t know your name.

                                             Honking while wildly

waving my arm outside my window

seems a bad idea. So I let Todd Rundgren blare

“Couldn’t I Just Tell You”

through the speakers as I watch the pair

of what must be your work gloves

levitate above your truck, twin birds

riding the upwind.

                                     You must have left them

on the flatbed, you probably

don’t see their defection in your mirrors;

you will likely later look and look

for them, first puzzled, then annoyed, without

benefit of explanation from me

or the bright red poppies

winking from the median.

                                                    Your gloves – expensive?

cheap?– are making the most of their takeoff, the lift

and loft, sailing past my car. I can’t resist

watching through my own mirrors while one

lands on its edge and rolls

almost like a wheel in its lane

and the other

glides just above the pavement.

                        Now they are waving,

I see them waving goodbye; these gloves of yours

are suddenly everything,

every last thing, I have ever

lost, loved and otherwise. Couldn’t we just

cry into cups of coffee together

for a little while, you and I,

over yet another of the many  

griefs we will all keep bearing

our whole lives long?

                                          Of course not. But I do

raise my hand as you speed

into that cliché of a horizon,

wishing you well wherever

you – now gloveless – are going.

Tonight I realized 

with the trees slowly undressing,  

baring their nude trunks and skinny arms for us once again,  

that I can see the train I hear every night 

from our front porch. 

It was the lamplight that gave it away. 

A sodium lamp. 

A streetlight that lights no street, only the rails  

just before the roadway. 

It flickered in time with the click-clack 

of wheels on ties, 

a giant steel metronome. 

The same rhythm I have known since childhood— 

those invisible trains that work in the night. 

Their whistle low and earthy. A prolonged mourning wail  

diffused through my bedroom windows, 

sustained me to sleep. 

But tonight I am awake, while my own child sleeps 

behind me, in the bedroom. 

I wonder if she will hear 

her own memories suspiring   

in the faded echo of the train whistle.

                 for Jimmy who is in Intensive Care

Large, white, thick around

the barrel, hair long flailing

from forelock, crest, hocks,

tail. He raises his head, gallops

with force through piles

of white and black snow.

Blood gushes from beneath

his legs. Sallow slush sucks

in red, washes all wounds.

The horse rushes down

and around a  narrow strip

of land, pushes himself into

white, like mounds of  manna.

Cleansing blood oozes. This

stallion powers,  his head

down, thrashes around, lifts

his legs. Blood clears out,

diminishes little by little,

washes into the earth. 

I tell my husband I think I may be an alcoholic. He looks at me cross-eyed, and asks half joking whether I’ve been drinking in the mornings. I say no, I just want to drink every evening. He says, “Oh, ok then, you’re fine.” I tell him I’m serious, I really want a glass of wine every night and I think maybe we drink too much. I remind him how my grandfather was an alcoholic. How I can still remember him snoring in his big easy chair, asleep after dinner every night in the middle of “Mod Squad.” I knew even as a child that somehow it was too early to sleep.

My husband says “Honey, you’re making such a big deal of this.” I tell him he’s probably right. I think I’m just bored because I’m way too much of a control freak to become an alcoholic. I don’t tell him this part. I don’t tell him that I have no idea what to do with my life so lately I just drink instead. I don’t tell him we have no children so I drink to make myself feel better. I save these gems for an explosion of emotions some other night.

I think to myself about my mother’s sketchy accounts of picking my grandfather up from the bar each night. I wonder why she did it. I wonder if she felt like she had some sense of duty, but more likely its just what they did then. No one asked any questions, it was the generation of silence. I wonder if she ever wanted to rebel and scream and throw herself onto her bed and cry. I wonder if she did. I realize these are things I will never know since I have no one to ask anymore.

It's Thursday and I’m making tacos. Having a glass of Sancerre and waiting for my husband to come home. I feel happy enough tonight.

Like candles that flicker in rooms

where there’s too much sighing,

sobbing, emotion…we dance.

Sporadic and jerky, gripping your back,

my body follows behind,

always one step too slow.

There were boys who said sorry

before breaking hearts – the ones

least understood.

Adult premonitions will remind about

simpler times, in places where memory

erases the smell of mold or uneasy

tinges in the gut.

We move like moths around lights

that line the street; quickly forgotten.

“Right. Left. Right. Right. Left.” – but I was lost

before the music mapped the room,

blissfully unaware and alone.

Six days hospitalized 

in Kathmandu 

from food- and-water-borne 

bacteria contracted in India— 

This gaping hole 

in my trip 

ripped soul 

and mind. 

In the USA, 

a friend looked 

at her globe, 

pinpointed 

where I was: 

close to China, 

Mt. Everest, 

Himalayas, 

near the end 

of the world. 

That’s how it felt, 

in the middle of the night, 

as if I’d die there, 

pursuing my dreams. 

Dreams hovered 

around the bed, 

nightmarish 

the gap between 

New Delhi and Mumbai, 

at the center of the trip: Nepal— 

what I’d longed for, planned on, hoped for— 

casting a surreal 

pall, denser 

than a mosquito net. 

I could barely 

recall even 

the sunset 

camel ride 

in Agra 

where 

I learned 

that when 

camels 

sound 

the angriest, 

they are 

merely frightened.

For the Love of Harlem, book, lyrics and original songs by Jermaine Nakia Lee, is a musical sensation profiling the lives of some of the brightest artistic visionaries of the Harlem Renaissance.  Legendary figures like Wallace Thurman, Alberta Hunter, Richard Bruce Nugent, Bessie Smith, Countee Cullen, A’lelia Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes are given real human faces. Their struggles between public recognition and devotion to being true to one’s self tell a story many people have never heard.

In 2007, For the Love of Harlem was nominated as Theater Event of the Year by Creative Loafing magazine.

For the Love of Harlem takes place during the zenith of the flowering of African American cultural and intellectual life.  

This period is referred to as the 1920’s – 30’s Harlem Renaissance (also known as the Black Literary Renaissance and the New Negro Movement). Nestled in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, this movement impacted the entire cultural spectrum; literature, drama, music, visual art, and dance. The Movement afforded unique ways to explore the historic struggles of Black America and the contemporary relevance of Black life in the urban North.  

These iconoclasts challenged White paternalism and rejected imitating the European and White American way of being; instead they celebrated Black dignity and creativity. Asserting their freedom to express themselves on their own terms, they explored their respective identities as non-conformist, feminist, same-sex attracted and straight-affirming Black Americans; all the while paying homage to a culture that had emerged out of slavery and was rooted in Africa.

For the Love of Harlem celebrates the courage, achievement, frailty and hardship of these creative ones; whose artistic contributions have had profound impact not only on African-American culture but redefined how America, and the world, views the African-American.  For the Love of Harlem takes us on a musical journey that shadows these brave artists who refused to be inauthentic, no matter what the Black public or White public thought.

In this closing scene, with the devastation of the Great Depression as his backdrop, scribe Langston Hughes contemplates what matters most....Love.

Langston Hughes:

(as if eulogizing Wallace) On a bright and sunny afternoon, in the year 1934, at age 32, our beloved friend and comrade Wallace Henry Thurman succumb to tuberculosis.

Like that day, he was a ray of light….beaming and pulsating to no end.  Many found Wallace to be peculiar, indulgent...but we found him to be strangely brilliant.

It seemed as if he had read everything and his critical mind could find something wrong with every piece of literature that met his eyes.  

He was profound, avant-garde and pioneering.  

As editor of the publication, The Messenger, Wallace was the first to publish my work.  He then moved on to become the first Negro editor of the white owned and operated magazine called World Tomorrow.  I didn’t always approve of his destructive way of being but I admired him like no other.  What I would give for just a portion of his tenacity.  We miss you Wally.  

Things are not as they were.  The country is experiencing an economic meltdown.  

They’re calling it the ‘Great Depression.’  There is no work.  There is no opportunity - only hopelessness.  And, of course, the Negro seems to be feeling its impact the most.  It pains me to see my friends and neighbors desperate for food...suffering from malnutrition...searching garbage dumps for something to feed their families.  (overwhelmed)  

It's devastating.  

(beat) Wally's resourcefulness would serve us well in these troublesome times.

It is said that this Great Depression began with a catastrophic collapse of stock-market prices on the New York Stock Exchange.  

During that time, stock prices in the United States plummeted and eventually dropped to only about 20 percent of their value.  

I'm striving to maintain hope but I just can't see how the country is going to recover from this.

A few years back, the patroness of the arts, A’lelia Walker suddenly passed away from a brain hemorrhage while attending a friends’ birthday party in New Jersey.  Her death undoubtedly marked the end of gay times in Harlem.  

Our Mahogany Princess…she was an impeccable hostess and a polarizing personality.  Her lavish soirees draw foreign royalty and local hoodlums alike.  Folks either adored her or despised her…we loved her.  Because we knew she loved us.

There’s not much to cling to in this moment except memories of better times; days and nights of passion...decadence…and exploration not soon forgotten.   All that remains now is Love.  Love Divine.  Love that binds.  Love that transcends.  

An unusual Love.  All that remains is Love.

For the Love of Harlem will be performed Saturday, Oct. 29 as part of Wells Fargo Community Celebration.