To My Mother Who Smokes Cigarettes


Rain doesn’t dampen
one petal of the flowers
the vendors sell downtown
at Cleveland’s Terminal Tower.
The vendors’ stalls are so bright
and dry.

I hardly notice the shower
outside the arcade
where I sit on a bench
next to a garbage bin,
enclosed, almost hidden,

but when the way opens
forsythia and roses
brush the hair on my forearms,

resting their sweet leaves
on my eyes and I think
of overused tears,
the overused moon
and my mother who says
she misses me
with her

tears, tears....

tears, forever.
I am all she has.
All I have is the city’s din,

and a little damp wind
that brushes the hair
on my forearms,
rattles papers
plastered across the wall

which from far away
look like prayers to God
that worshipping Jews,
nodding and singing
their little songs,
jam into the crevices
of the wailing wall,

but when you get close
enough, you can see
they are just advertisements:

Flamingo’s Hair Salon, Nike,
Coca Cola with its wavy
C’s coal black.

And above me,
the brown awning’s
hard lining.

A woman sits beside me,
with glue and grease
in her hair. She smokes.

I want to compare her
to my mother
who smokes too much:
her nails or as brown
as the awning above me:
glutenized, cracked
at the edges:
a pigeon’s flaking beak.

I compare thee woman
to a pigeon,
the most ubiquitous of birds
unchecked by buildings
or ticks:

You gray-brown woman
with joy and small,
what stormy winds
will you compass tonight?
Do you feel
your pulse’s flagging wing?

She blows smoke
on these lines,
this pathos,
this poetry,

this ever-changing
palimpsest
of love and lovelessness.

Handle With Care


The package from my mother
is taped so tightly
it makes me wonder
what’s inside: a Terra Cotta
Xian Warrior, perhaps
a fishbowl
in a computer?

It’s a sweater,
the same light-blue
as my mother's pills
for angina and high
blood pressure:
the comforting color
of pharmaceuticals.

She bought the sweater
at Goodwill where
Paul had left it
and his name
in permanent marker
on the label.

I think
of him, a freckled,
red-haired man
wearing a round hat,
round spectacles
and smoking a pipe.
I put on
the sweater.

Envision the darkest
Ugandan
wearing the skin
of a mountain goat.

Sweat
forms at my back
It is the heart of summer.
I’m in Alabama.

I want to throw away
this monstrosity,
but I see my mother,
lifting it from the rack,
if not tearful
then tearful in her heart,
thinking of her son
and blind to what
the moths have done.






The Paper Ark Display: An Allegory




He’s made the ark so bright,
it’s like looking into the sun.

The flat-head tacks look stung.
The paper is the whitest I’ve ever seen,

and when the wind blows, the boat swings
on bright lines attached to a thin, curved pole.

My eyes can’t track the brightening shifts.
But inside the ark is shade.

Although the sun is at my back,
I feel like I’ve entered a cave,

that I’ve peered over some palace wall
and stepped into a fairy tale

full of unloosened silk ribbons and feathers,
and layers of Polly Pratt paper dolls:

plump babies in bathing suits, spinning ballerinas,
cowboys, clowns and dancing pink hyenas—

so many paper flame cutouts, curved eyes, half shut,
stacked in layers inside this paper boat that flies

I think the artist wants to save me,
to take me back into childhood,

but it’s too light. How can anything so light save?
It’s like the air or cloud,

anything a body can pass through—spirit.
I’m too jaded to believe in that.

But when I was a boy,
a box of animal crackers could save me.

They came in a colorful box
with so much promise and mystery.

And, oh, the anticipation of lifting the tabs
and tearing open the plastic bag

that piped a little when torn
like a breath that carried the smell of cookies.

I’d reach in and pull out something deformed,
a shadow of a shadow of what it was meant to be.

I’d put it in my hot mouth
and maybe let it melt a little before chewing.

That was salvation, I guess.
I didn’t think about tomorrow,

or tomorrow’s Eucharist, the shadow I cast
against the wall of the store,

a mouth open towards the light
I didn’t think—

not even of the blissful sweetness
of the cookie on my tongue.






Heaven




Every Easter
When my father sees
“Jesus of Nazareth,”
he tells me how
he marched
on his knees
and dug through
layers of leaves
like a dog
to resurrect
old coke bottles
from the forest floor
where they had been
flung by drivers.

He tells me how
his chest heaved
in the darkness
under the trees.
He rolls up
his sleeves.
He shows me
the bruises.
He spreads out
his palms
and shows me
the calluses
as the great crowd
gathers around Jesus
and spreads palm
branches above
his head
and along the road.

I see my father
rub his head.
He’s really not
watching TV.
He’s thinking
that this is not
what he wanted:
a second grade
education,
these hands
that push mowers
across the lawns
of the rich.

I hear him murmur
of another world
he can hardly see
or understand.