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Text of Poems - Odes
Elegy for a Brown Velour Sofa (2003)
Ode to the First Granny Smith Apple Consumed After Removal of Braces (2003)
Ode to the Midnight Special Bookstore (2003)
Ode to Stolen Moments (2003)
I remember peering curiously into
a bright blue Community Cleanup dumpster
at the worn brown velour sofa
an oversized, overstuffed relic of the disco age
ignominiously tipped up on one side
pride stripped away
black chintz underlining torn and flapping in the crisp breeze
of a perfect fall day
Its springs sagged
and we propped it with plywood.
Its buttons popped off
and we clipped the jagged stems.
The pile had worn to naked black roots,
and the dust of ages rose
when its sleeping form was roused,
but ten years of our lives together
are enmeshed in the very fabric
Where you took my face in your hands
on our first date.
Where we surrendered to desire
one July afternoon
after three days of touching only with our eyes.
Where our guests
lounged and ate Chinese food by flashlight
during the hurricane after our wedding.
Where I laid in helpless despair
as our first child
drained its life from me.
Where I sat in state, like a Madonna
nursing our daughter, and later our son
dreaming of their futures.
Where it cradled my dishrag form through pneumonia
when I feared I would pass not only from life
but from our young son’s memory.
Where it supported your ice-packed,
Morphine sated joints
through reconstruction.
Where we comforted
fevered, pox riddled children
with Popsicles and Dr. Seuss and Betty Boop.
We have excavated Legos and barrettes,
scraped away Pop Tarts and lollypop sticks,
shared laughter and triumph,
watched the world parade by,
recoiled in horror at death and destruction,
numbed ourselves with A&E and Discovery,
cuddled our children before sleep,
collapsed in exhaustion.
Love-bed and sick-bed;
There is an open, pregnant, expanse in our living room.
We are adjusting, adapting, evolving
And your divots in the carpet are fading.
Ode to the first Granny Smith Apple Consumed After Removal of Braces
Ah, those noble incisors
whose natural knife-ness
has for so long gone unsung
in the bonds of their barbed wire prison.
They assail your brilliant verdance,
trying vainly and valiantly to
pierce the smooth resilience of your skin.
Desire rises mingled with pain
as slack, novice muscles
attempt confident conquest
wincing and grimacing
in tart intense joy
as finally your gleaming white flesh
is revealed in a bubbling froth
of juices bathing my fingers.
Each slaking, satisfying
mouth-ful moment
is a race against the ravages of time.
Ode to the Midnight Special Bookstore
Your aisles whisper to me
in a perfume of paper and linen and gilt
rising from carefully numbered
lovingly packed boxes
joyfully flung open.
I long to stroke polished paper covers
against my cheek
and slide my fingertips
over the rough cut page edges
of cloth bound tomes.
I hear the secretive crack of the spine
As I gently open a long slumbering volume.
The scent of ink and glue rises
speaking in tongues
storming the castles
shouting with a thousand voices
to the quivering rain.
With wit and wisdom
malcontent and delirium
collective joy and angst
ooze from pages crammed full of
voices that could not be stilled.
Faucets that dripped, dripped, dripped
until they were impatiently
thrust on full
spending themselves dry.
Ode to Stolen Moments
It is impossible
to open a Skippy jar in silence -
I surreptitiously swirl the spoon full
and raise it
engorged and glistening
to my eager lips.
I slide my tongue firmly up one side
and then down the other,
Pressing it against the roof of my mouth
Bathing it with saliva
And in a burst of flavor
Letting it sublime down my throat
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