Big-Eyed Afraid

Excerpts

Doll Baby

I was born, Mom says, by the Slice-
N-Tug, Cesarean, just hand-
Picked like a toy from a trunk – God-tanned
And yet, transparent? ice-

Blue cord choking a hold
Around my neck. I convalesced
In incubator sheen, undressed
And darling, I’ve been told.

From preemie small, I grew
Past grown (“Goddamn Incredible Hulk.”)
I’m too-short pants and breasts, all bulk,
And nipple peek-a-boo,

Barbie, and Glamour Do.
I’m Elegance. I’ve seen mom’s scar,
And my stretch mark of rouge et noir,
The pubescent residue

From the navel down, from where
I grew – my pigment’s treasure trail
Like bristle on an alpha male.
But am I debonair

Since someone told me once,
“You’re big enough to be a man” –
Adam in Eve, all Dapper Dan
And Dressy Bessy? Once,

Twice, three times a lady? Yes,
Me tall? Yes. Model-like I’ll lie
In a Da Vinci sprawl (fee fi ... )
And feminine finesse.

I’m Stretch. I’m doll-like seams
Inside and out. My brain’s in two
Halves split again. In transitu
My veins shoot blood in beams

Of brilliant red, the red
Of airbrushed lips, of toy-faced cheeks.
I’ll flirt in flush because Clinique’s
On sale. I’ll lie in bed

Made-up, a daydream death
With playtime rigor mortis, id stiff
In still-life poise, and watch my midriff
Rise, and hear one last breath.

Post mortem, Mommy’s prize
Will close her eyes and (finally) abstain,
The Porcelain Princéss, the Chatelaine
Dwindling to average size.

The Waywiser Press

Bees in the Attic

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past

– William Shakespeare

As if I’d move enough to make a noise
As loud as theirs, those bees, I circled around
My whirring bedroom, hurdling children’s toys.
I thought my lungs would buzz the attic’s sound,

Crescendo, shh and hum; went round until
I lost my breath, lay down. The ceiling wet,
White dark with the hive, I dreamt the comb would spill
Its honey on my pink blankets. When it met

My lips the plaster lath would crack, and sweet
Dead bees stuck to the stucco shards would swarm
My face. I’d drown in wings and the petite
Menagerie with the giant verve. So, warm

And wrapped, I moved the covers, stood on my toes
And reached, and to this day nobody knows

I reached. And to this day nobody knows
The stucco’s crimson dot came from my tongue.
When helping Mom in our small kitchen, I flung
The spinach-water and the afterflows

Of faucet-drips with flicking fingers, throws
To the fogged window above the sink. They clung,
I waited, for seconds until the window wrung
Itself of green, steam tears and the glass sang the woes

Of hissing chicken thighs fried in the cast
Iron pot. And the window sang in Grandma’s voice,
“Go Down, Moses,” and the stained-glass sugar plum

Fairy that hung on the liquid pane at the last
“My people go,” raised up her hands. “Rejoice!”
I heard the bees from there growl in a hum.

From there, I heard the bees growl in a hum
Everywhere, in Sylvan lilacs that I picked
For the basement’s dollhouse, singing in the drum-
ming dryer’s pulse as the washer flowed and clicked.

Their noise was huge to the pint-sized figurines
Who had no ears, but eye-shaped mouths. I posed
Their arms and legs in small domestic scenes
Of “Daddy’s home,” their tiny red door closed,

Their eye-mouths always open in a gasp
Or scream, as if something were about to fall
Upon their house like the locust plague. The hasp
Was fastened tight. I knocked them down, played all

Four died before the darkness could descend
As if, somehow, I’d write their perfect end.

As if somehow I’d write the perfect end
To every moment, tonight, outside my house
Long left behind, I watch a hydrant douse
A child. And when I let the darkness bend

Around me in a blink, I fade to black.
Eyes closed, I eulogize the Harbor’s dock,
Old Bay, the lit-up Bromo-Seltzer clock
Blue in the smoke from the beacon, the factory stack,

Night’s quasi-black against the smoke’s bright white.
The voice inside my head is talking smack.
The coda of today is just tonight,
No climax, only here and the bric-a-brac

Of memories just fond in retrospect.
In them, the spring’s azaleas genuflect.

In them, that spring, azaleas genuflect,
Wilting, about to die in our little garden;
The noon sun bores too hot; sweat droplets harden
And case my cheeks as new weeds bottleneck

The ants in sidewalk cracks. That spring, I cried
And checked and checked in mania. I died
My hardest but it never took. No doubt
I didn’t have the guts to try. But I’d scout

Locations (tool shed? shower? tub?), and Dad
And Mom, in separate rooms, would sleep right through
My tiptoed wandering about our blue,
Big siding house. I settled on the plaid

Of my own sheets, penning the letter in
My head. It pounded with adrenaline…

It pounds in my head with my adrenaline.
Dear Mom,
Call me the dummy, the mannequin,
Dead as the dancer in the box that sings
The Mendelssohn on the top shelf and rings
With the scope of bells, and vibrates with the sound

Of clocks. The clock ticks loud as Fall rewound
At every equinox, again and again.

And when you think of me remember when
I last said Sorry. As the autumns pass
At quarter to five, the time goes fast, and the grass
Will slow its growth. But I am huge in your head,
Pounding. And we’re the same. Your blood I’ve bled.
You’re sleeping in my bed now with my bees.
I’m swimming in the hollow sound of seas.

And now I’m swimming in that sound of seas,
The inexhaustible murmur. Now I’m back
To letters at this desk of letters, keys,
Paper and screen, your egomaniac,

Dear critics. The narcissist’s tried “art” inside
This paper’s looking-glass, distorted, wide
With me and my burned hair, a blistered ember
From the core of the stove’s hot comb. And I remember

My silence sweet as canopy beds or a girl
In spinning duchess satin’s whispered whirl.
Then, all the days ahead were bees in the attic,
The moments still unseen but heard, ecstatic,

Promising blood as I stood, now stand, all poise,
As if I’ll move enough to make a noise.

The Waywiser Press