Recent Writing in the Works.
SEVEN HESITATIONS
With her earrings, lipstick
and good shoes, they’ll say
she’s put on airs. Without them
they’ll say she’s let herself go.
She hasn’t let herself go
beyond the yard in months
hasn’t left Sant’Anna in years.
She will have to take the child
with her. They will whisper
when she passes. Even if
she leaves the child
they will talk about the child.
They will talk about the father.
Then too, it might rain.
If it doesn’t rain
the road will be dusty
and ruin her good shoes.
If she doesn’t go, they will say
she hasn’t left the yard in months
or the village in years
for fear of what might be said.
Bedtime Stories
When I was a child
a boy two houses down told me
each night he saw “to be continued”
written in white
at the end of each dream
and that the next night
the story would continue
from the night before.
I believed him because
there are some stories
that cannot be told in one evening
like the story my father told me
on nights when I came to my parents’ room
crying from shin splints.
My father ran his thumb
down the outside of my shinbone
and his hard fingertips down the other side
to press the knots from my muscles
as he told me about a mermaid
who used magic to split her tail
into two legs and walk beneath the moon
that continually renews itself
over this aging earth. The split
was painful, but still she accepted
dance after dance with a prince
so he’d be charmed by her.
When my father had rubbed
the soreness from my legs,
he sent me back to bed
saving the rest of the story
for another night. I drifted to sleep,
dreaming different endings. Would
the mermaid be swept ashore
by the prince, saved forever
from the cruel monster
at the bottom of the ocean?
Or would the prince become emperor
of a wet underwater dynasty?
It went without saying
the two would fall in love.
The only question was how
they could be together
when she could not live on land,
and he could not breathe in the sea.
Each night, the story rounded itself off
like the fullness of the growing moon
that renews itself over our aging earth.
I continued imagining endings,
even years later when I had grown
to love a man with a tattoo of a mermaid
covering his entire forearm.
He was a diver and brought back
so many pink shells and dried starfish
from the Gulf of Mexico
that I seemed to live in a drained aquarium.
There was no doubt we’d fallen in love,
as the moon renewed itself over
and over the same aging question:
when he could not live in my world,
and I could not live in his,
was this story to be continued?
Tonight
TONIGHT
Theirs is a red dance
Quiet, hot and damp.
He knows to hold each girl
The way her shape holds her.
His hand plays along her side
Thumb against the ribcage
His smallest finger on her hipbone.
He lets her take the first step
To see how she wants to be led.
His thighs lean into the dance
He steps back and guides her
To the right, to the right
She closes her eyes
And trusts she will be moved
To the right place.