-requiem for small domestic animals with a consideration to others-

1.
Thom McAn was a popular shoe-man

and invaluable neighborhood asset
in the small pet casket-making business.

and now this:

there’s a dead skunk floating

in my neighbor's pool and she

want's me to take a look.

I scooped it out with the skimmer

and flipped it over the backyard fence

into a patch of low-lying brush.

(as my young mother would've opined:

“poor little thing.”)

the death of the housefly was different.

she’d smash it with the wire-mesh swatter

so hard, the aftermath looked like Jackson Pollock
stopped by to paint her a new one.

2.
the Germans are angry again.

the French continue flummoxed
at the lack of respect for their war effort,
and with the passage of time, the Italians

seem to have softened the edges of the animated
exaggerations of their hand gestures.

3.
under consideration were alternative placements
for the skunk in the water, none more fitting than the one chosen.

I'm living in the time of the sticky virus, and

attitudes are changing by the hour with news on a roll.

overcast skies this morning.

5/28/20

-On the new Daphne Gottlieb-

1.

I've moved on from its pages, but

“Vamp” remains a favored entry.

It begins on page 15 ending on 19, and now

I'm nearly half-way through the poem "Anne's Neck"

beginning on page 30.

I like what I've read of Gottlieb, absorbing

what I can along the way by slowing the pace, but
sometimes moving with a sense of urgency
leading to a feeling of not being fully engaged.
mea culpa. mea culpa.
she doesn’t make it easy.

2.

I admit to paying the premium price for the volume
by being impetuous and not exploring the crowded

territory of the Amazon platform and

I'm now informed by third parties that other sellers

are offering "Final Girl" at somewhat lower prices, but

3.

what’s done is done.

I feel as though I'm thrown off my game when 
confronting the sharpest edges of the feminine

side of the planet.

I'll know more about that later, if ever I come to know it,
and because it's an open and shut case not in my favor,
no formal complaint will be lodged against the seller
over the amount paid for Gottlieb's "Final Girl."

It's well worth the price at the sum whose line is drawn

at the close of each poem.

now transitioning from page 32: "Speak Truth?"

to page 33: "Whiskey Tango Romeo."u7uu6

-compass heading south by west to the snapshots-

the southwest corner at 1017 Bedford, City,

the backside of the house near the drainpipe.

this is where we navigate to pose stone-cold for photographs.
one could say it started with maternal grandparents, then

to parents, in turn passed to us, the three kids in residence.

others showed-up, too.

cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, kids on bikes,

kids scheming to bypass adult restrictions, catholic

schoolgirls in blue rayon jumpers with boyfriends in white cotton

teeshirts displaying soft-packs of cigarettes as a rite of passage to manhood.

inside, this is where the kitchen sink was located and

to its right, a small counter space where

the chickens were plucked and their feet

removed for the broth of my grandfather’s soup.

outside again and the southwest corner is active with temporary figureheads 

giving way to others who long to see themselves captured in miniature form.

(It's a small patch of ground; a plot of land to be entered upon,
recorded for posterity, then vacated the way God intended)

the posing are facing westward toward the grapevine, slightly

to the south of their elbows, the craggy vegetable garden to the east

and Rachlin’s Junkyard in dead-ahead reckoning

just over the fence across Healy.

so that’s where we are in the time of Eisenhower and Stevenson, 

my young parents reportedly casting votes for Adlai,

henceforth referred to as a "great American statesman" by Democrats

and Republicans including Ike, alike.


Fall River / Quequechan / City, 1952

-faded-

I happened upon an ancient Egyptian

Pharaoh in a dream.

as Pharaohs go he wasn’t a famous one,

although “Famous One”

seemed like a moniker he’d embrace with gusto.

and he wasn’t what one would call authoritative,

but wasn't overly meek, either. a rather bland,

low-level sort-of runofthemill Pharaoh, one might say.

we talked about interior life and about the lies of perspective.

he said he preferred to address things that were substantial at the base.

he emphasized the benefits of stability in heavy-footedness. 

Pharaoh showed me a stone tablet which contained

the slight relief imagery of a cat.

he said: “this cat will travel with me

when I sail across the sea of the dead”.

but here, the dream faded in the manner

of the sliding doors of an elevator, or the curtains

of a Broadway stage.

later, after a splash of faucet water to my face,
I searched through the fragments left behind from the dream
in hopes of finding a better ending.

half-an-hour and two cups later, I could barely recall
the face of Pharaoh, or details in the setting of the scene,

or the process leading to Pharaoh's decision in choosing
this particular cat for the eternal take-along...

INCOMPLETE

-a moment some time ago comes all too clearly into view-

assigned to left field;

a baseball game

between us and them.
us, being who we are,

the eclectic, angry Italians,

playing in our house, a park.
them, being them, the swift,
fence-busting Portuguese, who
travelled here from the distance of their planet,
three small city blocks to the west.

a line drive, I thought

could be reached in the air, sank fast

and bounced in front of me.

It was a bad hop.

(“bad hop” is a universally accepted baseball term)
this one hit me in the face.

I'm stunned, briefly, but long enough

for the guy on second to reach home and

although it was unnecessary, he decided

to slide across the plate, adding another slap to my face.

all that was left to do was

lob the ball to the shortstop

as the runner trotted to his bench drawing

over-the-top adulation from his teammates.

my spikes instinctively brush the damp

of the left field grass leveling the divot.

my fist hard-knocks the cowhide pocket, once.

it's a clean pocket, and

after an early rain, the limelight glistened.

-why did the poem writer cross the road-

growing increasingly enamored with social distancing,
yet finding the work in progress pedestrian,
I’ll walk across the street
to ask the guy in the little grey house

what his poems are about; what makes them tick.

I drew unsubstantiated conclusions from

seeing him mowing and shoveling during
the two heaviest seasons.

his interior lights go on toward dusk like clockwork, and
I've noticed, without being nabbed in the act, framed
photos resting on a mantelpiece with others hanging
on a wall like certificates of award to the prizewinner.

he hasn't been cooking out, although the small, circular
barbecue grill stands waiting, its half-moon lid
locked-down to the cold ash. It's a dark, dark moon, and

once upon every week, large plastic bags are carried out;

black, opaque, arthritic-like nodules bulging from the innards,

listing unceremoniously at the curbstone.

blood-red ribbon ties, knot the openings, keeping the bags tight-
lipped, their secrets stuffed inside. I'll cross the road

to knock at his door to seek the answer to the age old

poets' inquiry of:–– "what’s what"?

-some time ago

I accompanied an old friend to a funeral.

deceased, was his former wife's mother,

the former wife, also my friend.

after the graveside service, those paying their final, final respects
filed into their cars closing the doors to the ceremony.

I expected to do the same.

after a burial you walk away
slowly, but surely and drive to breakfast at the diner.

but my friend stayed behind,
walking the pathways of the little cemetery
considering gravestones while I tagged along
biding my time to reach proper closure of the experience

over a utilitarian diner-plate of eggs over easy and home fries. 

then this:

he stopped to look at a stone.

he looked more intensely here than

he did to any of the other stones.

as to this stone, it’s all in the name etched thereinto.

this is the grave of someone he knew when

she was young and so was he.

he spoke her name aloud to the ether, or, 
to something other than me, questioning
if it was her or somebody unknown with the same name.

but reasoning soon found it certainly was her.

lo, these many years and suddenly there she is
(could be dressed in blue chiffon and slingback pumps)

showing-up dead to an old friend's reunion.

later, I ordered a short stack under a generous spiral
of “Vermont Maid” maple syrup and coffee.