The black swan fluffs
her dark wings, red beak
as surprising as the peacock’s
white plumes, gauzy half moon
wedding veil and the fact
that they both bore offspring
for the first time

The smell of sawdust I breathe in
As I work on the assembly line.
The monotonous, mechanized creation of orange crates
Gives my spirit peace – a stranger’s peace.

Valley oak
And rolling grasslands
All wildflowers in the spring
Dotted with graves
Backed up to the foothills
Blue mountain peaks
Uplifted behind them.

It changes names as it rushes east
– Toll Road, Turnpike, Thruway –
supernatural, this ribbon of concrete,
where our brand new Buick,
swept back with its fins,
can fly, leaving the flat lands behind.

it whispers its way through to me, the night,
in the dying light of day, the things done,
the slow dissolve of sense, the list of smiles
ticked one by one from memory, a frown
or inimical face, best forgotten:

Stay in your seats
and remain calm.

I am sure St. Bona of Pisa
said the same things afloat
when leading crusaders
to the Promised Land.

I hear in jail they beat you
with soap in a sock so the bruises
don’t show. I ride South
on the Greyhound

to Bloody Sunday, Bull Connor,

with a hodgepodge pile of stuff
to make a bouillabaisse or salad of leaves

build a mansion or lean-to shack
protect from elements and enemies

fashion a tiara or a sassy sash
so as not to scare the children

We climb the steps of the synagogue when Annie asks, What is Jewish?
She is the child of a Jew, a son I raised to tell a story
with the fanfare of a performer on The Moth Radio Hour.

loci of suffering’s
my measly attempt
to lower stress level

a crying need warns
me off phantasmagoric
pathologist’s post-mortem

when i was a child,
momma told me:
sticks and stones
may break my bones
but words
will never hurt me.

i am neither the seed
nor the fruit –
You water
me in the in
between;

between love and
the weeds
where i hide,

A month after our daughter was born,
we planted a white dogwood. I didn’t know
the legend of the crucifixion wood.
I just liked the symmetry
of the four-petaled flowers, plump white crosses
with bright green pistils in the middle.

when the night’s
dark eyes won’t lift their lids
the sun
won’t cheer the day awake
storms
lose their breath
oceans
forget their flow

The subordinate clause clattered to the asphalt:
Because I didn’t want to be a house flower.
He fluttered his fingers like a hitchhiker. He hoped
to thumb a ride from a dependent clause,

dressed in white
your deep eyes pierced the daylight
*Araminta, defender of the people
when you crossed the line to freedom, the stars opened up all around you

something in your heart made you pause, turn around, breathing

First explored by Spanish Army troops
From Mission San Juan Baptista,
Led by Jose de Guadalupe Cantua,

Son of a prominent Californio Ranchero
In the 19th-century Mexican era
Of early California history

First at sunrise,
Then at sunset
You ebb away
leaving me suspended.
My kaleidoscopic charms
laid bare at the altar
of jumbled cowries,
flowers of the sea,

The car I grew up in
Was a 1960 Pontiac Star Chief
Four-door sedan hardtop
In a color my Crayola 64 box called Flesh.
Even at a time when most cars
Came in a wide variety of vibrant colors,
This one stood out.

Mother needles & threads her way into conversations,
as she does with everything,
tacking here
& there, piercing
the cotton weave of our family, her place secure.

last Wednesday night
on the phone
you said
I want my kids
to know you
as you leaned toward
the darkened future

How do you keep on getting out of bed each morning?
A bed that is half empty since the day your husband died.
A life that seems like a flight of stairs missing a step
and you always seem to trip on that one.

Poet, you mama’s girl, so bad at volleyball, first dates, job interviews, your
albatross of asymmetry flung floorward like an eloquent glove, ironic as that yellow
pedestrian yield sign on Chestnut Street, permanently pavement-flattened.

When he’s eight he envies neighbor/buddy Bobby his airline pilot father
who drives his eye-popping harlequin Ford Thunderbird
with gears-a-poppin’ engine roarin’ to and from Idlewild
before and after taking off into the wild blue yonder.