Category: poetry

Genre – life

This is a four part poem

I. Born

Raising a child,

Frying eggs in a skillet or

Cutting an onion slice,

Requires little dexterity,

Just a sharp knife handle

and a steady hand.

Flipping over easy

Self centered delicate

Runny bright yolks to

Mop up with toast.

Sweet thick rings from

Bewitching mother of pearl sweet Georgia Vidalias slipping over crazed porcelain

Plates heavy, heavy

With steaks fit for a father- blue centered alone.

But infants insist,

on and on

they really do

Time for feeding, feed her

Maybe dab, a pinky in

Sour mash whiskey no

Not always! But

She’s fidgety and fussy

A finger to the gums

persuading those big eyes

While my own onion slicing tears

(I stop them with my open mouth).

Pin rolling down the dough

I once kicked an old can

Now it’s round and right Perfect for

Biscuits. Those dimpled cheeks, innocently evoked by

Sleeping babies. Innocently, they fuss and dream and smile

Of red striped kittens of

Yellow baby chicks and ducks

White doves and

Chocolate rich brown moody

Pasture cows in

Bluegrass green fields graze on

Dandelion and blowing

Wishes with milkweed.

A flashing picture book

Of outlined farm animals.

Imagine if you can even become innocent now,

just what

A new born dreams

She only knows

What she seen in wordless dreams:

A simple life, a sample, up early, words cruel,

unavailable

Pets without names yet.

But she owns them

Somehow she knows

To say “give me” not

Please.

Guilt visits

Later, in a higher grade, outside

Without the confines

Of a barn door or a kitchen floor.

II. Marriage

Black spot appears

Marring the whites

Of their eyes imagine

Seeing through the eyes of a fly

Telescoping to a single shot.

Remembering someone’s

Boring slides of Niagara Falls and winter.

Swarming in short sharp

Ticks of the tocks

From nowhere in particular

Buzzing over gym socks

Submarines in urban pools.

Soft velvet bodies lie in dust

Crisp crepe carcasses woven

into cheap throw carpets.

Small specks in a salesman’s sample

of linoleum tiles manufactured

Reimagined to look like real wood.

Indications that a family once

Sat at the minty bright green

Plasticine kitchenette set,

Who all sat straight in the

patent leather star shiny chairs

Who dug roads in the seats with

The bones of their rears

Who ate silently slicing through toast

With the sharps of their teeth.

Who showed sun honied skin

Beneath short pants and mini skirts.

County club wine tastings

Sipping reds poured

Flowing from boxes and bags

Drunk with bloody noses punched

Over, and over again.

Everyones incinerated thoughts flush away

Alongside shit and Charmin

Q-tips and zip locks and

Blood wiped onto old rag.

III. Old

Humbling, a jumble,

Of disconnected thinking thoughts

And it damn near hits her

Out the curtained kitchen

window like a brick red pick up truck

She left the house unlocked

with the icebox door wide open.

Who still uses that anyway?

Icebox, she’s thinking

Just as he asks her to

open and say ah,

Thinking in her head

Spit in the clear eddy

Down the shined shell porcelain

Now she remembers

why the flies died.

IV. Eulogy

What a character

Forgotten.

The eye color gone

Within a month

Faces go

Details first and go quickly.

The memory makes an excellent prodigy

For the medical examiner to go searching

At past midnight haunts

Out to steal fresh looks

Just before the hearse arrives

Horse drawn and piano black.

Ilene Kaminsky
Yeux Deux Vintage
Etsy shop: YeuxDeux
Blog: http://www.cancerbus.com