Inheritance
My father got wind of the deal
from someone at work,
the seller in Brooklyn
now past sixty,
bad eyes, he explained
and the Cadillac was
driven only a few miles a week.
It drove like a dream he claimed
as he turned his head
to exhale from his cigarette.
Then as I watched, Dad gave the old guy
cash, didn’t even take the car
for a test spin first. I tried to
suggest a check––a way to back out later––
but he whispered to me, “Sometimes you have
to trust people,” which struck me
as strange, but
he believed it. He believed a lot,
passed a lot in my direction, and I caught
a few. I followed him
home to Long Island in the old Chevy,
the car that was now mine.
Tonight a stranger from the internet
marketplace stands in my driveway,
his two bulky sons
hauling my used sofa down
the stairs and out to their truck.
He asks, “Can I date the check for Friday,
my pay’ll hit the bank by then?”
I consider insisting on cash, but
my grandson is swatting a tennis ball
against the garage door,
straining to catch this conversation
above the pop-pop of the ball.
I raise my voice a little so he can hear
my answer.
First published in Tralier Park Quarterly
Heart-to-Heart
At her request I text my recipe for Thai noodles
to my daughter, who is all grown up,
with the caveat that I haven’t made them myself,
so I can’t vouch for them,
and she sends back a different one
she found on some website
with the update that she is in
the grocery store right now! and will probably make
the ones from my recipe
because she already has the ingredients
at home. My thumbs are getting
tired but I don’t want to end this yet––
she is typing like she talks,
in clipped notes, abbreviations, and the assumption
I’ll understand––so I ask her why she is shopping
if she already has the ingredients and she says
because I didn’t know I had the ingredients
until I got your text, so I say, logically, then
why are you looking for another recipe,
but she doesn’t answer, just
leaves me hanging like she’s three
again and we are having a conversation
that only makes sense to her, about why she took
all the clothes off her doll and cut off all her hair,
and she says the doll was hot, daddy, and gives me
a look like I am some kind of idiot, then
walks out of the room.
First Published in Schuykill Valley Journal
Black Watch
In the suitcase my clothes, slightly soiled
from a quick
family visit,
waiting now for a wash. And still lodged
in the corner––the clear plastic baggie
of co-mingled ashes, bits of grey bone
& brittle procrastination, like pebbled residue
from a slow-cooling beachfront
bonfire in the sand, resting
right where I packed them.
I had hoped to finally
scatter them somewhere, do it with
the sibs,
after 20-plus years of
schlepping around like a shirt you can’t
throw away, wishing my sisters would have
ideas, or my brother would come up
with something.
After all they belong to all of us, the two
people we shared.
We got through steamed clams and barbecue,
but no plan arose. I think of
my father,
whose humor transcended even dying,
assisted or otherwise, would’ve wondered
what’s taking so long,
why’re you kids holding on to us this way?
The baggie goes back in the closet, on the same
shelf where they sat just a week ago.
It fits in the storage bin
with the threadbare, plaid blue-black flannel
my kids
gave me for my 40th, the one I’m saving but
don’t know why, also wrapped in plastic.
First Published in Schuykill Vally Journal
Undercharged
Under the burning glare of
fluorescent lights
of the ice cream shop
on a steamy summer vacation night
I cheated the man
out of a dollar or so,
wordlessly accepting the change
in my palm,
when, our eyes meeting, you saw
the look on my face.
You looked up at me,
saying nothing,
studying something.
What did you learn when,
as soon as you got outside,
your scoop hit
the pavement with a plop,
your eyes spurted tears
with instant disappointment,
and we went back inside
to the same man
who gave you
another one
for free?
First published in the Rat's Ass Review
Poetic Biography
I’m reading the on-line biography of a famous
writer, a laureate whose language is
so clever it makes me quake,
whose life in academia hovers in the background,
the life of I-have-time-and-space-to-write.
We are both old men now, but
it says that he was born
a few years before me, and I think
“Oh, good. I still have time.”
Then I click on a video where he twangs
so matter-of-factly about himself and
his writing and quaintly blathers about failing and
failing again and I take heart until
I see his country porch on his country house
off a mud dried road and then
just to make me feel worse
he puts a floppy mushroom hat
and plucks a goddam banjo for heaven’s sake.
At least he’s not wearing overalls
doesn’t remove his teeth.
In a close-up I wonder “How did those crags
get carved into his face?”
notice his moustache needs a trim
his wire-rimmed glasses are slightly askew,
explaining his view of the world.
So I go outside and add chlorine to the pool
dive in naked, swim long, under water
start a new poem in my head.
First published in Mojave River Review
Once Again, the Flock
Dawn, I lean over the steering wheel, look up.
Traveling, linked invisibly against a grey sky
their outline expanding like a spill
shifting their positions
coupled for life, moving, a still autumn journey.
October, the Chesapeake landscape dim and dull,
a flock above my head, honking
above the harvested fields, corn stalks lie down
against the new chill, brown remnants withered,
like an exhausted traveler collapsing in the dust.
Noon, forty cycles later, I return, drive
the same roads, a few miles and messy tears
from that life, to the route,
watching again these geese gliding overhead.
I quickly close the car windows
to keep the blown leaves out,
heading home, to an aging man’s dry bed.
I peer above the wheel again,
again descendants spreading wide against
a feathery cloud, the same fixed and moving form
I saw then,
in constancy they reiterate.
Dusk, I park beside the fresh sod lawn,
enter a house bathed in falling down shadows
unpack the moving crate - the hallway clock
and hunt for the winding key into the night.
The next morning, swooping over the roof,
not leaving – the warmer days keep them close –
they consider moving on, but don’t.