Recent Poems from Married to the Muse
I Also Love the Little Things
The tiny pink stars of phlox massing against brick.
The single cat whisker left on the sofa.
The vibration of the hummer when he visits the geranium.
The one sly streak of hot pink under the gray cloud.
The last sip of tea from the cup Judith gave me.
The one tulip that never opened.
The sliver of soap with the scent of ripe mango.
The pennies in the gym parking lot.
William Carlos Williams in My Attic
The flashlight beams up inches of dust,
the house fifty years if it’s a day. I hunch
into the low space, brush away fat strings
of cobweb, come upon treasures.
Maple bed frame for the mattress now on the
bedroom floor. Tall flask of clear turquoise,
a window jewel for the breakfast sun. Poster
tube nearly missed in the thick dust.
I tease out a short roll of fine vellum
tied with purple satin, a poem neatly penned
in a flowing script. I hang the spell of its magic
on the raspberry wall of my kitchen.
Plums over the icebox. So sweet!
Just over the Line in Oakland
July 1969. Astral Weeks comes on. I’m lying
with my lover in his room on Shattuck Avenue.
We’re just over the line, Berkeley to Oakland,
and over a murmur of voices.
The Black Panthers and their headquarters.
We pass them in the parking lot, faces
not yet famous: Cleaver, Newton, Davis.
None of us sees the future.
Not man walking on the moon. Watergate.
Roe v. Wade. Not the violent endings. Theirs. Ours.
Right now it’s just the violins and Van’s voice.
His curious poetics and our bodies slick with sweat.
The murmur of voices below us,
voices we can’t quite hear.