OUT OF WORK

 

The comic book villain, usually

More genre-savvy than the hero,

Thought the story would be longer.

Despite robbing bank after bank

He somehow has no money so

He checks the ads but they're all

For air-guns or x-ray specs, 

For lovable sea monkeys or for jobs

Selling a newspaper called Grit.

("Everyone loves Grit!")

COVENT GARDEN

 

In time the ghosts lose hold

Of their names but remember

What they charged. "Five pounds

For a night in a well-furnished room." 

"A half-guinea for an hour in a shed."

"Some pennies for three minutes against a wall."

LEGACY

 

The executors' inventory revealed 

King's painter François-Hubert Drouais

Left behind an army of spoons each of which

Knew its place, as did François-Hubert.

Aside from a brigade of miscellaneous spoons

Willing to do almost anything there were

Soup spoons, table spoons, tea spoons,

Coffee spoons, dessert spoons, salt spoons,

Olive spoons, gravy spoons, sugar spoons

Jam spoons and one spoon that scorned

To touch anything but mustard.

STORAGE

 

My mother had a sewing box of some light-colored wood

Finegrained and with a slanted oval knot in its lid.

Opening the brass-hinged lid raised up tiers of spools

Arranged by thread-color, some with needles stuck in them. 

(If there was no black when needed, dark blue could be used

But her conscience would be troubled.) There was a pin cushion

Made to look like a ripe tomato and three thimbles;

The heaviest one, dull silver, was never used except to distract me

If my mother needed to think and sew at the same time.

There were pictures on it, almost rubbed away --

A crescent moon, a long-haired woman with a spear, 

Two cats, a boat being rowed through the air.

ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN

 

Over the head of the woman sleeping next to you

You see her dream; as in comics, it's in pastel colors

And surrounded by soft scalloped edges.

She and the last Ming Emperor -- Zou Youjian, 

(1616-1644) -- raise clouds of dust as they argue

In an old-fashioned car racing down a dirt road.

Neither one of them seems to know how to drive;

You think about entering the dream before they hit 

One of the frightened animals running alongside them

But can't remember -- in those dreams of yours

In which, but for a blown tire, you'd have won

The 1961 Indianapolis 500, have you learned

How to use a stick shift?

THE THIRD COUSIN TERRY

 

My cousin Terry -- the one who went to war

Not the one who went to Hollywood nor

The one who went, depending on whom

You asked, to Vermont or to Delaware --

Was tall and strong and had red-brown hair

She kept cut short. During World War Two

She learned to smoke and joined the navy

As a nurse. She gave up cigarettes

Before I met her but would sometimes

Gesture with an invisible one or thoughtfully

Take a puff on it before answering a question.

Her voice was quiet and hoarse and unnaturally

Free of malice. Thinking of her, I always see her

Carrying wounded sailors -- one under her right arm

And two under her left -- as if it was for her

The easiest thing in the world to do.

HERSELF

 

While Ono No Kamachi slept

The self she'd be in forty years

Rummaged through her closet

Looking for her old red dress 

When it was still new 

But other selves, getting there first,

Were using it to play Dragon Queens.