Jesse Carpenter

The letter to the editor
called him a vagabond by choice,
questioned his unmade claim to martyrdom,
dying there like that
frozen in the snow,
across the street from the White House
where tuxedoed politicians
and crepe laced ladies
stuff caviar in anxious jowls.

Jesse Carpenter: a vagabond by choice,
didn’t get an IRA account,
opted for the streets instead;
diseased, alcoholic, impoverished
– another frozen bum
tweaking social unconsciousness,
only a germ in the mucus
of great social expectorations.

Lover, the streets grow cold,
but I would wander the ghostly city.
Past the guest home asylum I would walk
assertively with my mace in one hand
and my hair tucked inside my coat.
Lover, the wind blows leaves
down the asphalt pathway to your house
where I would march kicking and crunching,
some wild current fluttering out from my rib cage,
ahead of my body in anticipation of you in the night.

I’d come to you, lover, and curl my limbs
around your fire.

I’d walk the empty night for you any time
if I thought I could wake you.

Lucille

It can’t be real,
that aluminum walker,
those legs that once tangoed
in the Trocadero Ballroom
shuffling paralysis.
It can’t be real,
her warm flesh
now numb,
those wishes once made
under a twilight star
now settling
into a blue wheelchair,
fading into senile screams
of drooling octogenarians
clutching teddybears.

She covers her head
with the foam rubber pillow
and cries
when no one is looking.

Maternity

We grow slower
these heavy days
in chairs that creak louder now.
My skin stretches
around your fetal hiccoughs,
my hand touches your jutting foot,
my man smiles at your roundness.

Rocking in dreams,
you turn in slumber
and for you
the sun shines red through my blood,
for you we pray the guardian spirits
closer to home,
for you angels of music
play Beethoven,
and you hear it
as if from far away
under the sea.

in the wholesale warehouse of lovers
I’ve bargained for discount models
and walked away glad,
leering greedily
at what I got away with,
to find out later
I’d paid too much,
the models weren’t rechargeable,
had no warranty,
or I’d lost the wind up key.

But I picked as best I could
between the plastic weeping ones
and the Betsy Wetsy boys,
wishing for another model
– one who could breathe life
into his own system. . . .