Two sparks fanned into an inferno,
hormones racing at light speed,
devouring the last of childhood,
unstoppable.
You are the girl with a half-pulled
zipper on her bedroom ceiling.
One side of the painting a gold
stripe running from the edge of the wall
to the center of the room, a detailed
rendition. From here the mural
opens to reveal a wedge of jet-black
sky filled with glow-in-the-dark planets,
whirling galaxies, shooting stars.
As with most art, and with all girls,
I’m not sure what to think.
The mural poses several questions,
although for a teenage boy,
only one question matters—
is that zipper half open?
Nick’s
I.
A last game break cracks,
squeaking chalk pivots
on custom pool sticks.
Stripe and solid scatter,
race for soft edges, batter
each other’s tangents,
bump cushion,
slow-roll
stop.
One player props against a stool,
re-lights a Marlboro.
Another coolly stalks the green slate field,
calling his next best shot.
In a corner, a couple seeks distance.
She sits erect listening, staring
at the floor. He sidles into her gaze, reaching
for her shoulder, she jerks away—two hearts
in a Gordian knot.
Co-eds help a birthday friend giggle home.
Their waitress fills a tray with empty bottles,
(one stuffed with a carefully peeled label),
wipes her once white rag across the tabletop,
pockets the ten—hard-won milk-money.
A Miller man sits at the bar sweet-talking
the dirty ash tray, picks at a half-dozen cold
hot wings. Across the thin room, a plain woman
locks his copper eyes—smiles him over
for a few quick shots. He holds open
her black leather coat—
they trickle toward the side door.
Santana wails, in stereo:
. . . tryin’ to make a devil out of me.
II.
Under a fog comforter
good mornings are exchanged
in half-tone light.
Fingers grope
a plastic coffee spoon,
double-sweeten instant.
Nothing is promised, nor expected.
I fasten an out-of-town tie,
snick the door locked.
Outside, two tentative song birds
call mates. A neon sign buzzes:
vacancy.
Catherine Dierker
dinner party
a dishtowel tucked
in your back pocket
that i follow
as we walk
up the stairs
single file
a quiet entrance
shoes are removed
the humility of
standing in socks
before you
for the first time.
movie night
low light in the doorway
thin and pallid,
sourceless
a glow that works well
with the evening,
the mood
on screen a film plays
out in crimson,
it bleeds
this place calls for
something fragrant,
breathing
a flower.
cocktail hour
endless summer.
no socks and
pants rolled up
drink in hand
with one leg
crossed, casual.
he’s a cool
match for
a kid like me
calm-faced and
quiet, sits
like a listener
the picture
makes me
want to sing
or at least
to swing down
and kiss his
bare ankle.
window treatment
your fingers are deft
they fold clothes neatly
draw perfect flowers
cut fruit with precision
tonight, as you ready
the table, i sit waiting
watching the sun set
through a curtained window
like smiling through a veil.
a bike ride / the christening
together we crossed over
to a place of quiet, of peace
where we will swim
in the lake of endless depths.
the moment of diving
the hardest moment
the curve of restraint
the fear of violence.
shattering light,
shattering glass
we crossed over
flying, crying—
with wind
with gravel
hitting our faces
stinging our eyes.
William Doreski
Hate the Sinner, Not the Sin
Reading Dante has taught me
to hate the sinner, not the sin.
An hour before dawn the mirror
in the bathroom confirms that pride
defines and defiles me, the pores
of my parchment hide opened
to flattery I never receive.
I should replace myself with lust,
with the smirk of the lecher;
but you with your usual beauty
would find that expression comic
on me, a Halloween mask
two weeks early. Our barred owl
hoots his tedious medley,
each note thick as a woolen scarf.
Stars rattle loose in their sockets,
and one goes down with a shriek.
Or is that the neighbor’s rooster?
Pride offends me enough to cut
my throat, but I can’t afford
to waste an expensive razor blade
by indulging a little vengeance.
Besides, you’d have to clean up
after me, and I know you hate that.
The microwave oven beeps
that apologetic little beep
and the cat’s breakfast is done.
The kettle boils water for coffee.
I should swallow my pride in doses
modest enough to fully digest,
but the famous portrait of Dante
with limber nose and oval mien
leers on a paperback cover
to confirm how clumsy I look
unshaven and fluffy with sleep.
I pour hot water over grounds
and realize this is punishment
enough, the daily unraveling
of ego in bite-sized chores, each
modest enough to kill me.
Post-Neoclassical Poem
The blond forest undressing
leaf by leaf reminds me
how you’ve courted every man
who’s leaned even slightly your way.
Two brooks converge. A boulder
overlooks the pool where nymphs
bathe on summer nights while humans
indulge in mortal dream lives.
I’d like to creep here in the dark
and watch moonlight catch a glimpse
of metallic bodies flashing.
I’d like to compare their grasp
of the classics with your own;
but with your mastery of legal
Latin you’d probably snuff me
under a heap of edicts and writs
to enjoin me from remembering
&
nbsp; how frankly naked you could be.
Of course you don’t want to contrast
your old-fashioned body with theirs.
Of course the brooks flushing down
from the twin monadnocks have chilled,
dispersing mythic creatures
until the next two seasons pass.
At the ruined stone dam, two deer
startle and flee. The folding chair
left to rust many years ago
still invites me, so I sit.
The light seems smaller, too shy
to support complexities no painter
since Constable can endorse.
Three miles above, a jetliner
sears the air. It’s headed your way
with fuel enough to eat all three
thousand miles between us, leaving
only the faintest taste of ash.
Moustaches of Slaughtered Heroes
Framed in expressive black oak,
your watercolors stick to the wall
like leeches. Frost hikes its skirts
at the pond’s edge where geese chat
about flying to Kentucky.
Do I hear a drumroll enter
your small conversation? Do stones
at the bottom of the pond expect
to testify? Other events squeeze
from the tubes of paint arranged
by hue and cry. Brushes become
moustaches of slaughtered heroes.
In gusts of small talk you project
the naked retorts of the moons
of Saturn and Jupiter. Half mind,
half sun, you’re anything but flesh
now that flesh has lost its fashion.
Your horizons sport crows and jays
to herd away the geese that spangle
your lawn with gray wet droppings.
Yet the bird wars occur mainly
in literature you’re too proud to read.
I prop myself against a wall and wait
for the pond to freeze with tingling
and cries of pain. Your husband plans
to stay up all night and whisper
your fetishes to the stars. Why
should you care? Sparks roughed
from visiting boulders tender
light and heat enough to ease you
into those last gestures artists
require for their celestial fame.
Your water colors resist you
just enough to cling to three
or four dimensions, honoring
or more likely blaming you.
Naked Under Our Clothes
Naked under our clothes, we enter
the famous public library
as if unaware that even
avid old scholars possess
bodies as secret as ours.
You head for the gardening books
while I descend a floor to scour
the art books for Gauguin prints
to rip out and smuggle home.
The canned air smells chemical.
The librarians nod and smile
and wish they could step outside
fresh as King Lear in the rain.
While you read about designing
gardens with water features
to foster turtles and frogs, I bless
the tropics for inciting Gauguin
to portray such burly colors.
Later we’ll meet for lunch
at the oyster bar where lawyers
and their paralegals hunker
at small tables and plot their trysts.
Someone should paint their expressions,
which prove that they’re too aware
of how naked they could be
if circumstances should allow.
I find a couple of honest prints
but lack the strength or moral
fiber to tear them from the books.
Maybe I’ll copy them with flimsy
pencil sketches from my youth.
The lines shiver, stutter and fail,
but the effort relieves and renews me.
For a moment everyone’s naked
and tropical in hue, even upstairs
where you flirt with photos of gardens
Adam and Eve would have scorned.
A Hideous Verb
Self-condemned to adult camp
to punish my political self,
I weep with arts and crafts all day
and drink with friends all night.
The weather sighs like a bagpipe.
The horizons crumple and fold.
I miss you the way a bullfrog
misses his croak. I’d phone you,
but you’d hear the hangover creak
in my voice and disdain me.
I’ve sewn you a leather wallet
and crimped several blobs of jewelry.
I’ve even woven a wool rug
that isn’t quite rectangular.
When with my fellow campers
I walk to the village at dusk
I suspect you’re watching via
satellite TV. In local bars
we slurp cheap beer and play darts.
No fights, no politics, religion.
Only the slush of draft beer, kisses
with little force behind them,
promises to keep in touch.
Porous belief systems fail
in this crystalline atmosphere.
Dawn breaks the backs of couples
caught in narrow bunks. Such crimes
lack resonance. After breakfast
of groats, instructors apply
cobbler’s tools—hammer, awl, needle—
to leather, plastic and wood.
We follow step by step. Always
with you I’ve followed step by step,
but at last I’ve learned that “craft”
not only makes a hideous verb
but encourages useless skills.
Robert Barasch
Loons
My daughter photographs loons—
finds them in their nests, tracks them
as they swim across lakes, knows
when the hatchlings are due, waits
to record first swims.
She photographs babies on the backs
of their mothers and fathers, the same
who dive from under them
to emerge from the water with fry
to put into their mouths.
I have pictures of my daughter on my back
and of my granddaughters on her back
and of my great-grandchildren
on their parents’ backs
and being fed treats over shoulders.
“Up,” my children would say
and we understood and lifted them.
Lev Vygotsky proclaimed:
no thought without language first
and I think of the loons’ calls.
Are the words of instruction in those yodels,
setting the babies to think about leaping up?
Did I grab my mother’s breast without a thought?
Did Helen Keller's first thought come on that famous day,
or do we just not understand?
Pas De Deux
The fourteen-month-old boy stands,
one hand on the edge of the chair
before launching himself
toward his great-grandmother,
who grips the edge of the kitchen counter
before stepping out
toward the table between them,
one amazed at his new way of travel
the other perplexed by hers.
They continue to learn new steps of their minuet,
first performed shortly after he was born.
Early variations included slow dancing in rocking chairs,
arm and hand motions together on a piano bench,
these and others before the early warnings.
>
Now, both vertical, the choreography calls
for their hands to meet at the center of the room,
an awkward couple among complacently confident dancers.
The background music is both silent and polyphonic,
his a Sousa-like march with flute and cymbals,
hers a violin with slipped tuning,
strings frayed, notes elusive,
more and more unreachable.
One peers gleefully into the opening out,
the other squeezed by the relentless closing in.
Bedazzled
That ’possum never had a chance,
dazzled as she was by the beam of light,
brightest star of her night; she,
fading already in their thoughts
before the warm glow of the fire.
They sat and talked about her—
how her eyes gave back to them
part of the light they gave to her—how
each shot once, the three shots hitting her—
how she lay, limp fur, on the ground.
So Mary, seventeen, a game girl,
lay drunk on her father's lawn
while the three football stars talked
in the red glow of the Wurlitzer,
recalling her hungry eyes, her furry gift,
her falling into a loose heap
when they dropped her off at home.
Spring of 2001
Fifteen feet of snow and twenty below
got the downtown caucuses talking.
“Might not get a garden this year.”
“Tractor tires still frozen to the ground.”
“Old horse’ll have to eat snowballs this summer.”
At the red store, a man at the gas pump said
it was because of killing the rain forest.
Another one said you can’t blame nukes
for this one. A man at another pump said
“Oh yes you can it’s the final tab
for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Oblivious, the croakers strained their muscles
pushing the sluggish mud, breathing stilled,
letting their cold skin suck muddy bubbles
of air. All pushing at the same time,
they sent currents to the ceiling of the pond,
startling the ice. Like a locomotive in a roundhouse,
the engine of winter got turned around;
still, no one heard a sound. Suddenly,
only two weeks behind schedule,
the snow receding to the shadiest woods,
the songs erupted in the pond. This year,
along with their songs of longing,