Thursday, January 21, 2016

We Refugees


We Refugees

Cheaper than lock & key, a chowkidar
defends our door. He’s ragged, poor, menial
kin to fruit peels we toss in the street,
yet he guards our home, we, the non-
pariahs, so luminous, bindis scarlet
between our eyes, brilliant silks binding us,
shades & smells of turmeric, chilis,
asafoetida. He waits, his heart
an apple wizened to a frame for pips,
pledged to our stone stoop & waves the well-
regarded across to our baubled inside.
Monsoons don’t muddy these parquet floors
or swamp the beds, we women marooned,
we refugees, our bruises, our spells.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Jane Cooper

The Potato Eaters by Vincent Van Gogh [Wikipedia]

In the Last Few Moments Came The Old German Cleaning Woman
by Jane Cooper

Our last morning in that long room,
Our little world, I could not cry
But went about the senseless chores
— Coffee and eggs and newspapers —
As if your plane would never fly,
As if we were trapped there for all time.

Wanting to fix by ritual
The marriage we could never share
I creaked to stove and back again.
Leaves in the stiffening New York sun
Clattered like plates; the sky was bare —
I tripped and let your full cup fall.

Coffee scalded your wrist and that
Was the first natural grief we knew.
Others followed after years:
Dry fodder swallowed, then the tears
When mop in hand the old world through
The door pressed, dutiful, idiot.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Seabright Beach


Seabright Beach

Not a dog or a person, pink gash
in a low sky, the lighthouse beams green,
the tide’s past high, waves cream
across smoothed sand. The sanderlings
scurry left & right, rise like smoke,
fade like a mirror’s steam. Great blues
jut from a condo roof, one wraps
tight, one pivots — a weathervane.
Perched in live oaks, night herons
white plumed & black crowned wait
at the fish-cleaning dock. Crow gangs
argue, mockers rock, juncos hop.
They don’t feel cold or the little rain
or they do, & have no words to complain.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Drone


Drone

A man airlifts a drone
inches from my face,
whir of blades
the boom of surf swallows.
Strobes streamed
from flyer to phone
mimic the mandala
he’s made in sand,
a maze I can’t tour
without erasing.
This is my living,
he says. His rake
feathers & scrapes
splines & spandrels.
His gait’s uneven,
one flank of him concave.
A harbor seal sprawls
on stone & sand awash
as anchored flesh reveals,
limen of fresh & salt,
air & water, shallow
& deep. Pale spots
dither wet skin.
The sea swells.