Estate Sale

I stood in the middle of the dead woman's closet,
running my hand up her skirt.
The slick under-lining gave a startled hum
as my nails slid upward to the bodice,
finger fluffing it from the inside,
imagining the body that once filled the dress.
Matching shoes lay on the floor of the closet
next to several boxes, each year
labeled and tucked away.
Her scent rose from every box of intimations—
a strange narcotic, each object—scintillating contraband.
A silver picture frame held portrait captives
who smiled in black and white oblivion
as I placed them with the rest of my pillage.
Behind me, two men stroked
a burgundy horsehair settee, arguing its worth;
their voices washed over me like a warm anesthetic
as my eager hands
probed womb.


Remembering Hector

They'll tell you that Kentucky bluegrass isn't really blue.
But perhaps they've never seen it at that curious moment
when the ground wakes up and yawning drops of
morning stretch across each slick blade.
I get up early every morning when I come back,
finding my way to the back porch
with a cup of my father's strong brew.
Everyone else sleeps in,
clinging to the quiet for just a bit longer
before the birds and the smell of country ham
draw them from their rooms.
Settling into my favorite chair with my woman's bones,
I see with gentler eyes, wide-open.

He came for the stripping season,
when shirtless centurions worked the tobacco 12 hours a day,
cutting leaf from stalk and earth,
leaving the barns bulging with yellow skin hung up to dry.
He was machismo, arrogant and stubborn and
I gave in, every time,
because he was beautiful in the afterglow.

The first time I got a pile of crap in my mailbox,
I thought it was a joke.
But when they wrote “Mexican Slut”
in the dust on my father's Monte Carlo,
I knew we were not enough for a place
where each race had their own part of town.

We spent our last night by the swinging bridge,
finding that grassy spot just above the crick.
He slept before me, and I lay on his chest,
trying to bury myself in the fascinating curve of his mouth.
The sun rose too soon that morning,
glinting off the bluegrass like a
burning, rural spotlight.
There were words that should have been said,
but by the time we headed back to town,
he was already gone.

This morning, the grass is a lapis lazuli blue,
warmed by a Sun that touches
but does not burn the sky.


Jeremiad

I wanted the house at the end of Evergreen Road—
an Italian villa-style demi-mansion,
its back rubbed by the still waters of a pond
surrounded by forest.
I saw myself there, on the deck,
in the kitchen, in its three bathrooms and first floor master suite,
had already moved in when
my neighbor told me what went on there,
why no one had lived there for so long—
all those young men, the cocaine,
the man who fled the house,
blood smeared across his buttocks,
fell face first into the pond
and never got up.
There wasn't much he wouldn't do for a hit.