Long hot nights cruising Main, driving super slow with the windows rolled down,
The radio cranked to a soft rock station. Witchy woman sing along; see how high
She flies. Loose limbed, loosed tongue, necking in the backseat to Eagles’ live
Rendition. Good girl says whoa. Bad girl says go. She’s got the moon in her eyes.
Traffic slides by, wraiths on a river; heavy breathing, heavy petting. Hearts beat in
Sultry unison. Hands discover new delights. Tick tock. Curfew saves the night.
He began preparing for her death years before the actual event; his shocked expression;
A hand clasped to his chest. Practiced repeatedly asking what had happened followed
By a stumbling pause. When the time came, though, he found himself genuinely grieved;
Motions more than mere pantomimes of loss. Maybe, he thought, I’d actually loved her.
Reflecting on this he realized he’d never fully appreciated her. Their home became mausoleum-like,
Every photo of her, just her, now papered the walls. His own visage cut away, often raggedly.
His guilt lurked in every corner, yet no one ever looked. Rehearsal had been his undoing.
we tickety clicked to the top of the drop, anticipation taking hold in the pit of my chest.
too late now, wheels set in motion, arms raised high in jubilation as we slowly straddled the crest.
music raced, strobing lights outlined faces, speed as distance divided by time enhanced fear of falling.
we’ve got this, plummeting only to soar upward again, no tickety clicking only whoosh, loop calling.
spiraling up in tight circles winding apogean, then back to perigee with a stomach dropping lunge.
giggling uncontrollably, swiftly closing into denouement, a calculated hitch before taking the plunge.
Say the words of prayer and grief, lament the price of life’s cruel thief
Close the coffin, light the pyre,
forty-nine dead, when will we tire
Of violence, untimely loss,
naming names and counting costs?
After Columbine, Aurora, Newtown?
San Bernadino, Orlando, Charleston?
Too many times, too many lives,
close the coffin, on sons and wives.
Daughters and fathers laid to rest
a clueless nation fails the test.
I am the tuning fork, a shimmering frisson of vibration calling the heart to harmony
I am also the rock, though, throwing ripples concentrically across once calmed waters
Peace and chaos vie for my soul, my meditation song pulled from the place of light
Spilling haphardly across the courtyard where I tend tightly ordered rows of flowers
Regimental form forced on blood red roses contrary to their petals’ better nature,
Never certain which will win the day, tranquility or turmoil, I toil with hope and a smidgen of fear.
My first pair of blue jeans, begged for and purchased in my 14th year of life, came with a double pronged tongue lashing from my mom:
1) Those #%*!@ jeans will have to be ironed, and
2) She wouldn’t be doing the #%*!@ ironing.
Apparently Mom had been traumatized after being forced to iron her elder brother’s jeans during their own teenaged years.
I didn’t care. Never mind that in 1969 the only jeans I could find that fit me were made for boys. Although Levi’s for women were marketed as early as the 1940’s, the handful of stores in my little town didn’t seem to carry them in string bean size–I was all legs, no hips, and so out of luck unless I shopped in the young men’s department.
But the moment I broke in that first pair of jeans–sitting in a bathtub filled with icy cold water while the pants shrunk to fit me–I fell in love. There was simply no going back.
For the very first time in my young life I was making a statement about who I was and what I wanted to wear, rather than what my mother thought about such things. Jeans equalled independence and freedom, well as much freedom as a 14-year-old girl in a one horse town could have.
And I never ironed the darned things, having found that an extra tumble in the dryer with a wet towel smoothed out the worst of the wrinkles. That made me feel immeasurably better at solving problems than my teenaged mother had been. You see, I didn’t realize that the clothes dryer of her youth was a line strung between two poles.
Now in the last year of my fifties I find myself still in a mad love affair with denim. I own three nearly identical pairs of cropped denim pants from Chico’s and my only clothing dilemma is which tshirt to pair with them on any given day.
Thanks to modern fabric blends, these jeans don’t even need an extra tumble in the dryer, or if they do, I have a steam setting to de-wrinkle them. We have come a mighty long way since then, and most of it was in jeans.
Ode to Blue Jeans
Faded blue or indigo
Cuffed or frayed or pressed
Even with a rip or two
My jeans remain the best.
At break of day I slip them on
To wander hither and yon
I’ve napped in them and swum
In them in someone’s backyard pond.
Take away my beer and wine
Confiscate my magazines
But keep your damned hands off
My ever-loving jeans.
Once the sun sets over Lake Yvette the sky takes on a subdued tint, filtered through a green
Glass, vintage Coke bottle. Stillness supersedes movement in the magic time between
Day and night. No leaves rustle. No animals stir. Deep silence permeates until broken
By the trill of a lone bird. Here I am, he calls. I rule the evening. Hear my plea, oh Lord.
I try to answer him, but we speak different dialects of the same language. Hear me, I cry. Nothing more.
Carefully he tucked the snowflake patterned flannel sheets up around her chin.
His flattened palm against her forehead confirmed his worst fears.
As he explained where he was bound she concentrated on a spot above and to the
Right of his head where a piece of molding had torn loose and dangled listlessly.
Her wandering gaze concerned him, but he dared not turn his face from hers
As she wondered how long the house had been in such a state of disrepair.
Days? Months? Years, perhaps? Why did it matter now that he was leaving?
In spite of his reassurances, she knew she’d be gone before he returned.
“Coward,” she thought and continued contemplating the plaster.
Any time I’m sick I imagine this horrible scenario in which I’m left alone to die. Thank you, Stephen King for planting this morbid idea in my head.
I couldn’t help but notice that 2nd Amendment bumper sticker next to the
Confederate flag emblem and the Trump for President sign on your white pickup
Truck. I raised my hand to wave my middle finger, but was afraid you’d take it as an
Invitation, so instead I mustered a smile and entertained happy thoughts of the
Donald being dissolved in a vat of acid while wrapped in the stars and bars of a
Symbol from America’s racist past. My momma always told me that ladies don’t
Flip the bird, but she said nothing about imagining the gruesome end of a would-be
Tyrant and his dangerous rhetoric. Being ladylike never felt so good.
She thinks she’s done
Nothing left to say
Then words like salmon
Swim into her brain
“Write me,” they cry
“We need to be heard!”
So she writes with abandon
Every single word.
Upstream swimming
Struggling for life, though
Some are better left
Engaged in cold strife.
Praying for Eyebrowz 