Thinking About Rain

Thinking About Rain

At night we

Chose the lake.

Waves churned

Scuttlebutt breezes,

Made us restless,

As if they knew

About the rain.

Then the sky dried up

And curls of mist

Rose, creating quiet cold

And my need

To touch your hand

Without speaking.

Thinking About Raining

Thinking About Raining

Not color to color
or line to line
but stone to
not quite drops
the slowness
of breath
like water



Thinking About Raining

Almost tired.
Trees go still.
Sound stops.
Easy to imagine
that grey
will slink
into sighs

Mr. Cardinal Hides

Mr. Cardinal Hides

The cardinal hid today.

A year ago

He came to the patio door

When I was standing just inside

And proceeded to dance

And display

As if I were a female cardinal.

But today I heard his chirrup

In one of the neighbor’s trees.

I could not see him.

When I fixed on the tree

He was in

With my ears,

I saw, amid shades of paler

And orange red,

A deep uncompromising red

Which in a month’s time

Would be a leaf

But which now, shocking

The reds around it,

Didn’t move with the wind.

Then I knew him,

But didn’t move or smile

Or call.

He was after all in hiding

And probably thought

By the stillness in which

He sat,

That nothing could see him.

I was not about to shatter

His illusions

Of camouflage.

I just hope that

Some other fauna,

Less charmed than this human,

Didn’t try to take a bite or nip

At the one leaf

That didn’t move

With the wind.

Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes

I don’t know if there are seasons

When the flesh of a tall heavy

Dark haired woman of 60

Is more delectable.

Usually the mosquitoes menace

In summer,

Stick tiny stingers.

Soft thigh flesh bitten

Sings of a meal

Well taken.

This time, however,

Not until October

Did my friends

Choose to feast.

Perhaps they are going

For the vampire look –

Teeth raised, incisors poised,

Victim alluringly terrified.

The only problem is

That they are mosquitoes,

Not bats,

And thus their ability to stun

Is limited.

They can only generate pink

Buds

Not blood lines of fear,

And their most evil looks

Are lost on bigger life forms.

But remember, would-be beasties,

The thrill of your mosquito lifetimes

Begins and ends well south

Of the throat

And itches its target

So much more successfully.

Try again next summer,

When you don’t have to live up

To movie clichés of fear

And need not imitate their drama.

Don’t laze until autumn.

Burnish those points.

Bare your weapons.

I, your meal, will be waiting.

To Charlotte Bronte

To Charlotte Bronte

You wrote my favorite book.

But would you have liked me -

tall, heavy, dark-haired

Like the painting of Cleopatra

That you scorned,

With eyes dark as coals

And something of a temper?

I would have loved to write

In tiny letters, as you did:

Spare, carefully inked in.

But my handwriting, when legible,

Tends to flourish-ridden and grand.

I visited both Haworth and Brussels,

Your home and your nemesis.

The wind screamed wonderfully

In Haworth, and shivered

Through less-than-heated rooms.

But I had a wonderful cream tea

In  town.

In Brussels

The plaque with your name

Had been removed,

But the map still showed

The school.

Now a film center,

It still bore the marks

Of the garden,

The forbidden alley

And the spy casement.

As I stood there,

The school swam

Like a bottled genie

Into the terrace

And vanquished the film center.

I could hear whispers and laughter

In French and Flemish

And see you as you wrote

In loneliness, pride and longing

To the brilliant, cynical professeur

Who broke your heart.

Rain flew down in gusts.

One hundred fifty years

hence, and the park

was still wide-pathed

and quiet.

The church you prayed in

Still echoed your words:

“Mon pere, je suis Protestante.”

I, a Jew, repeated them

As if to summon you.

What would you have thought?

Would the exchange

Have ended in friendship?

Or would you have looked,

Sneered and walked on?

A tall man with a sign

Sat on the steps.

He needed money.

I palmed a five-franc bill

Into his hat,

And wondered

If you would have done

The same.

Pressed Flower

Pressed Flower                Frannie Zellman  

To the memory of my mother, Millicent Eunice Kant (1928-2014)

A paper cut out

Of gold in your hair,

With a white sash

And white silk scarf.

At six, you are a daisy.

You dance around the pole

And sing.

You forget the eye condition

They can’t cure.

When you are thirteen,

You skim the stage

In toe shoes, smiling magic

Into the hall.

You forget

That you're not dancer-thin.

When you are sixteen,

Your voice floats an aria

Onto the record.

Even Italian cannot capture

its fluid sweetness.

You sing and play by ear.

When you are twenty,

Fifteen men ask you out.

You smile and toss out

Words to amuse.

Instead you captivate -

More interesting than

Dewey and Russell.

You are a bouquet of flowers,

The sound of swift laughter,

Sun on the parkway.

But they tell you

the next performance schedule:

marriage, children.

Why couldn’t they have just let you play?

How to Undress a Fat Woman

Kathy Barron is surely one of the mistresses/masters of fat erotic poetry, so I can only follow quietly in her footsteps :)



If your eyes
know how to undress a fat woman
how to  love the  flesh
that ripples under her arms
and slips over her belly
how to play under her pants
and grab hold of the rounded hips,
how to limn the hair like small feathers,
how to tease
in thought
the soft moistness
and oh so satisfying wet curves
that glisten when your mouth sweeps them,

then you are allowed
to let your fingers
follow
your stare