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
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