Water
and Sand
This story ends when night falls
and the windows are covered with silk.
Long before that, the older sister
will break the piano bench.
She is in love with a boy who
spends his free time climbing trees,
but she is afraid of heights.
Her younger sister plays the viola
in the high school orchestra.
She is into Hayden and Bach,
indifferent to boys and trees.
The sisters love to get frozen
yogurt at the mall, and they sing
about windows and silk, boys and
trees. A talent agent hears them,
offers an audition as backup
singers for a fading star
who’s rumoured to be addicted to a
street drug called Mesmer 2.
The singer loves the sisters,
especially the elder, because she hungers
for a man who cuts down trees, but
has rejected her advances
until she gets clean. You would
think the girls’ parents
would have something to say, but
this isn’t that kind of story.
The parents work, eat take out,
stream movies and TV shows
and post about their worries on
Facebook. They have many followers.
Mostly they stay locked in their
rooms. Their daughters
become backup singers, then stars.
The author has forgotten
about windows covered with silk and
the broken piano bench.
Now he follows the younger sister,
who writes songs
about a strange man who left his
shadow behind
when he slipped away from his
previous life as a mage or priest.
One day she gets criticized for her
political views,
or not having political views.
Someone calls out her innocuous tats.
Now the story ends at the shore,
where the sisters go to eat clams
and listen to the radio. Waves roll
in, waves roll out.
It’s like a film from 1967, with
the last shot nothing but water and sand.
Cruelty
All day long you wonder, as the
river
sweeps toward the rocks below.
Can cruelty be breathed in or
taken
with the warm bread on your
plate?
And now the night sky,
a nearly full moon burning a ring
of clouds.
Today you cleaned and baked,
walked
nearly nine miles up the muddy
trail.
You spoke quietly on the phone, you
read
again and again of the dreadful,
spinning world.
You felt blood rise in your aching
arm,
you nearly fell asleep even though
the house
felt empty and cold. Where is the
music
of tranquility? Can’t weeping
cease, as wind
bends young trees on the edge of
this smoky pond?
Chocolate Sauce
Who ever behaves as you would
expect?.
When my mother came home from
work,
rattled because of the man who
believed
he was an ice box, I laughed until
I slipped
on the wet kitchen floor. I banged
my knee
and soaked my favourite shirt.
Soon we were both laughing,
though she kept shaking her head,
no, no,
it’s not funny. My sister had about
enough,
became a bicycle, sped off down the
highway
that ran through our yard and
didn’t stop
until she got to Corona or
Katona,
I forget which, and married a guy
with hair
made of golden rope. I guess he
loved her
smile and chain. They had kids, but
we never
saw them, except at trial. We were
a close family
until we weren’t. l gave up talking
because
no matter what I said, someone had
said it before
and probably better. From then on
all I did
was watch TV and eat ice
cream,
like someone who knew they were
going
to die. I stayed alive for awhile,
though,
and got very fat and my eyesight
suffered.
Then I saw a commercial for a
gym.
Then I saw one for a lite
beer.
Then I saw one for a hamburger
piled
six inches high, with a pyramid of
French fries.
My mother came home from work
again.
She saw me trying to do
pushups
into my ice cream bowl. Who’s
laughing now,
she asked and I really wondered
what she meant.
Nobody was laughing, the ceiling
had fallen in
and it had begun to rain. I was in
love
with a woman in a cartoon,
not the pretty one
in the tight skirt but her friend
who wore glasses and overalls and
could fix
toasters and cars. I would marry
her tomorrow
and travel the world with my violin,
my violets, my violence.
It was all I could do to hold my spoon straight, lick out the chocolate sauce.
Well done; I've always enjoyed our poems, remembered from Flutter.
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