Winter Poems

Here are some new drafts of Boston winter poems.


THE FIRST GRADE HALLOWEEN PLAY
THE YEAR MY FATHER DIED

On the stroke of May
bats made their way
into children's plays,
and the spelling bee flew
into the wrong word
for a sickness
able to floor you,
at least for 24 hours-but
an inconvenient 24 hours-
heaving into flapping
bat wings of black
construction paper. I chose
no corpulent pumpkin.
No ghost for me.




AT THE MUSEUM

Meeting you here
isn't fancy.

The bathroom here is fancy.

Even the women on plaques
have two kinds of dresses:

an upside-down umbrella,
another choking the midriff.

Our meeting here is akin to
metal chairs in the courtyard,
mugged by snow.




I SHOT DAYLIGHT

Pellet holes in panes of glass,
antennas of cracking.
Daylight could have sought
retribution at nightfall.
Hues relinquished
in pursuit of a gray worm,
and in silence thickly
spackled disease.
I spun around a sapling,
all elbow grease exhausted.



DOODLED NAME-DROPPINGS

Pablo Picasso meets Georgia O'Keefe.
Alfred Steiglitz and he rumble.
Helen Frankenthaler pours a bucket of paint on them.
Louise Bourgeois sculpts her mother
as a gigantic bronze spider,
eyeballs peek out of the grass.
Agnes Wright draws rectangles around the house.



BOOK OF THREE DAYS

1/24/05 6:18:12 PM

Popsicle stick people
drone on, appearing
to lipstick my long face
in light of contusion.
Until catapulted.

Pick up new object.


1/25

No room for cream. No milky space.

*

I heated black until red.
Then singed yellow
until it escaped as char
into the night.


1/26

I have a date with my shovel at three.
A flurry of activity before:
Typing notes
Listening to recorded poem