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Maybe
it's the way spring has been flirting
with summer – the clouds made of rain,
the cake in the oven, children on the ball diamond –
or some prehistoric ticking mechanism, or simply
that she owns all the right equipment,
but my wife has been talking babies again.
Lately she's been dying to make them,
and why not, practically everyone else
in the mappable world is having or trying
or wants to – you get a wok for your birthday,
and chicken fried rice is the logical next step.
The secret's in how you scramble the egg;
at least that's one of the secrets. It sounds simple,
but you could cook a lifetime and never get it
right. You could cook for one
and never hear the stove say turn me on.
It wasn't always like this. Life was much easier
before it got difficult, before things were invented,
and the names for things, the single rule then
being don't piss off the lions. Of course we did,
inevitably, and then invented several primitive ways
of subduing the lions, which led to several other
more efficient solutions, which led
to the martini. There are the cave dwellers
to prove it, computers to date the drawings,
-ologists in the labs running around
naming everything. And not one spell-check
decent enough to identify a dangling modifier.
Nothing to measure how much fear
sparks invention, nothing to measure fear whatsoever.
Portrait
of a Texas Commemorative Quarter
It
had been in her pocket
since the drug store that morning
where she bought Zig-Zags Visine
& Tic Tacs
there were other coins of course jostling around
a rose petal drying & wads of Kleenex
these kept the change from jingling
as she turned back from the casket
slowly like one half-pausing in a doorway awaiting
or expecting some remark retort goodbye
the man inside looked pale laid out
next to such floral arrangements
Sometimes funerals really are reunions
said one well-wisher to a distant cousin
she'd overheard as she moved
out of the pink-tinged chapel
past coats on hangers & children dressed as adults
playing tag & a spare Leslie speaker
for the Hammond Organ which sounds
like a ghost spinning she
turned
the corner into the lounge room
with its incense of cigarettes & palm-sweat
it was crowded in there
Chapstick tissues car
keys coins
she pulled out a handful
mustered the appropriate change
into the slot of the vending machine
noticed the commemorative quarter
& its shine for the
first time
Texas' silhouette under a "lone" star
an unoriginal design
the rest cupped and returned to her pocket
still full & awkwardly heavy
& the keys dug her thigh
as she leaned far over the credenza
to pour another cup of free coffee
bitter over-brewed &
thin
it tastes good to be
in a different room than the deceased
©
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