i miss anna

on the island
when we were really really broke
(too broke for rum)
we made potato curry
and still invited everyone over
to take a bite

paper doll II

the paper doll girl got a paper doll boy
(he had a beret accessory)
and she fashioned him into her lover

instead of dressing him up,
the clothes came off

until the day she
looked
at his one dimensional body
and realized that
no matter how many Gucci shirts she bent over his arms
or how many wine glasses she pasted to his hand
he would always \be made out of

wood pulp and red #5

the party

wendy grey was perpetual jet lag.
susan condor was red wine stained teeth.
martha winters was apathy and over-education.
miriam paul was solitude.
and every night they had a party all together all at the same time in the same place.

wendy would always say “I am so tired! why can’t I sleep?”
and susan would smile sloppily.
martha would nod and be rudely aloof while miriam usually locked herself in the bathroom.

what a strange group of girls they were.

home for the holidays

everyone is prayin' for rain with their eyes up toward that cloudless sky

but i'll just lay down in the cracked clay of lake lanier
and say

"man,
i know how you feel"

and one day you'll be in the NY Times too

The bridegroom’s previous marriage ended in divorce

smile for all the camera flashes, baby

just look at that diamond sparkle.

paper doll I

There once was a paper doll girl. Each time she met someone new, they would pick up the blue polka dot spring dress and place it onto her, bending the paper taps over her shoulders and hips, and stand her up somewhere. Or they would put onto her the tulle and flowers wedding dress. Or the little black cocktail outfit. Or the business suit that had been ripped a little at the waist and pasted back together.

Everyone loved the paper doll girl because she became whatever they wanted her to be.

plans for 2008

take up courses at the Sorbet (that’s in Parisfranz) in pencil sharpening, cursive handwriting, and the metric system.

work some times for Mr. Vansnuzzlegarf, collecting cans and reading warning labels.

after exams, begin work with Mr. Widdy Lohan, in his low-rise office building overlooking some seines, re-corking wine bottles.

in august, return to Lose-yer-antlers, with new hair color and passport of Lottie Majors.

dip

he used to rest his hand in the dip near above my hip

and push into me, laying behind

and beg me to stay the night

i would reply, with retrospective irony,

that my single-girl ways wouldn’t allow it

anywhere but here, anytime but now

i wish we were playing yam under the mosquito nets
listening to the short-wave radio oh oh

walking on the sky

california postscript

at first: hesitancy: “what are you doing tonight?” three times I said no.

then: frantic: nights on the town, restaurants with rectangular plates and bottles of fancy champagne. he kissed my neck and said pleaseplease: no. my intuition said. no.

we came to rest, subtle, settle, long nights horizontal and afternoon kisses. I gave in with delight: enthusiasm.

then: I put on my thrift store slip under my kimono, painted my toes red (like us: the town) waiting for him. he never came. he still hasn’t come.

he: drives a fast car. i’m back in paris in two months. he tossed me before the expiration date. still haven’t learned to trust my instincts.

weather

you
murky_storm_cloud
moving along
but never getting any sunnier

beaten#eaten#trambled#andhard
a bad egg

r
a
i
n
over other pastures
you're cramping my style.

moi, ce que j'adore...

he has blond curls that wrap around my fingers

i'm enamored with a man from california. and for once i find it difficult to write it out.

one word, plural

fall

eyeliner

bubble

off

sunshine

hips

me

hips

supposed

be

secret

please don't tell anyone that i really really wish he was thinking of me.

- - when;

when you make my knees shake I’ll bite through the orange, rind and all.

when you make my knees shake I’ll tilt my neck back. let go.

rind and all.

little things

to enjoy
the return of
picking out cute knickers
as i dress
in the morning

and all the anticipation
that it
implies.

oh!

Plier

“Pliez! un... deux... trois... Pliez!” said the woman with the tight bun of silver and white hair, black tights and tasseled skirt. She tapped her cane on the wooden floor as she counted and glanced at all the girls in the long, clean mirror as they grasped one hand on the barre and the other arm reached out, long, lean, and fingers delicately separated.

Every girl, in time with the music, slowly bent her knees outward and lowered her body as the woman counted, to the piano music on the record player. “un... deux... trois...” Raising up to the sky. Backs straightened. Necks long. Heads always held high.

“Pliez!”

**

“Like this” she said as she took the next piece of linen from the cabinet. The little girl looked over to her mother and watched as her mother’s hand gently aligned the corners of the napkin and bent it over, creating a crease. Then she bent it the other way, flipped her fingers, and placed it on the gold leaf plate. “It’s easy” she said.

The little girl’s fingers were a little sticky and her nails were uneven and bitten. The dining room table was shiny and smelled of furniture polish. The little girl took a napkin and began creasing and bending. The room was freshly vacuumed and the little dish by the couch was filled with potpourri; it sat on a lace doily. She tried to look poised like her mother, try to cross her legs so that they looked long like her mother’s, tried to caress the linen as her mother had so effortlessly.

“Fold it, baby” her mother said. “Fold it like this.”

**

heat

It’s so hot. It’s the kind of heat that people can’t stop talking about, it’s the only thing that matters. On the radio, at the supermarket, in line at the bank.

It’s so hot your hand gets the best part of the popsicle and the little girls do double dutch on the sidewalks 1-2-3-4. The thoughts are slow and there is that time of day where nothin’ can be done but lay your poor body down, its too hot to make love, gotta love with your eyes instead. And those double dutch girls squeal when the ice cream man comes ringin’ his bell- it’s too hot to think about serious stuff, just decide which rum to put in the mojitos and move your straps to the side so you don’t get white lines on a strawberry tan. Its too hot to do anything in the kitchen but slice sour fruit for the lemonade and open take-out boxes, the chocolate left on the counter has melted and my lip gloss and my motivation.

It’s the kind of heat that makes you paralyzed. Sitting like an ice cream scoop that fell out of the cone, slowly melting and spreading over the ground. In front of the air conditioner. In front of the freezer. Half floating in the cement pool. The nights are sweaty when you wake up in damp sheets and hope there’s a breeze on the front porch, cool glass of water but even the water out of the tap is warm like the streams out of the sprinklers running for the black-eyed susans but mostly the double dutch girls and all the boys are cute because they are deep brown and glistening, in this weather everyone has a subtle southern accent. Let’s go dancing if it dips under 95 on saturday night.