Barefootwriter.com

hangs over the railing
at the first townhouse
next to my building
only I don’t know yet
his name is Ronnie.

He is 15, maybe,
tall, Chinese, with
smart, stylish glasses.

He skips hellos goes straight
to my dog’s name,
then sticks his hand out.

I’m Ronnie what’s your name?

I decide against
my citydweller’s caution
shake his hand
and tell him.

How do you spell that?

He spells it back in staccato,
tapping his leg at each letter.

His parents call him back in.

It’s ok,
he says,
you go on without me.

I stand there dumbly, smiling,
wanting to tell them
he isn’t bothering me,
staring at the crack in the door,
from which he struggles
to emerge,
pressing his long,
taut fingers against it,
frustrated,

telling me again,
It’s ok,
you go on without me,
as his parents
wrangle him inside

and the door closes
in front of him.

My parents say
I stooped to sing
to dead crows on the curb

Nighttimes,
they drove me past
dead end signs
so I could flirt
with what lay beyond them

I piled around me
in my canopy bed
a pillow grave
so I could pretend at death.

Tonight
amid the pillows
I fold my arms across my chest
and hope to remember
whether death fancied me

and whether the crows
whispered back.

(nominated from Poets.org to go to the September 2007 IBPC)

It is my job
to distill the news
and e-mail it to my dad
who gets half an hour
twice a day
on the Internet
at the Alexandria library
to see if his house
has taken on water

there is a lot I read
but don’t send

a woman floating
her dead husband to the hospital
on an unhinged door

the dogs
the rescue workers describe
frying in the power lines

people trying
to break into Children’s Hospital
as if there weren’t enough
sadness there
for just one place

but between us
there is that one house
on Ridgeway Drive
that hasn’t taken water

and Great-Aunt Nialta
who expects a phone call

to make sure
you got home safe.

Sometimes
you’re all day
alone
trying to rearrange
a half-finished house
and you sit
by the dryer
and cry

because it isn’t
the life you wanted

and you wait for him
so you can say you’re
pissed

then he does something
sweet
or funny

and you can’t.

Go down
into the cavern
mark your handprint
red
upon the walls
and your cheeks
you are woman
and this is
the calling of power