SUFFRAGE

My mother's death drops by to say
She'll be twenty this year and next year
When she's old enough to vote
She means to vote for dead candidates
Since they'll understand that death
Is serious business and not to be trusted lightly
To strangers and children. I tell her the voting age
Is now eighteen; she could have voted last year
She says "Why didn't you tell me? Now
I'll just have to vote twice."

GRACE'S LETTER TO THEODORA

 

Is so long it can afford to spend several pages

Describing a new-made dress which has 

A deep bottom ruffle, about 12 inches wide

A narrow ruffle and a gathered ruffle

Almost as wide as the bottom one.

The overskirt has a mourning roll of velvet and folds

Of velvet and silk. The sleeves, cut open

Almost to the elbow, are decorated with Malta lace.

There's a black bow in front and one in back

And many, many buttons. Theodora

Might have the same dress made so she and Grace

Can be twins unless Theodora (who will soon

Decide to be Sarah instead) would rather be twins

With Bessie Winthrop, who has a new fringed velvet dress

Though fringes aren't cheap and black velvet costs the earth.

GETTING TO GUANGZHOU

For every Icarus who falls

Headlong from the sky there is

An Anti-Icarus who digs a hole

All the way to China, remembering

To make a sharpish left turn when he's

Gone about two-thirds of the way

So he doesn't drown in the Pacific.

ELIMINATING ALTERNATIVES

 

Melancholy is not clinical lycanthropy,

(The state of suspecting you're a wolf)

Nor is it kuru (when your nipples

Are thinking about killing you 

By suddenly inverting and attacking

Your interior). It isn't sadness simple;

It isn't grief unmixed nor agenbite

Of inwit. Saint Theresa says that

The pain of God setting your soul on fire

Isn't really melancholy either. Durer 

Thought melancholy had a beard

All that's known for certain is that

Melancholy is cold, dry, dark and heavy.

Lucifer's been called the first melancholic 

But insists that was God, not him. "This was,"

He says, "back before the first day so there

Was no light; the mistake was natural."

JOURNEYING

 

Having suitably prepared yourself

Having dressed in appropriate colors

Having bid your reflection farewell

You shoulder your pack and move out

Your shadow shoulders his pack too

Heavier than yours and filled

With what you meant to leave behind.

MISSION

 

To weave through alleys the moonbeam

Must act as light was never meant to

Moving in slow spirals, cultivating a taste

For music played subtly out of tune.

It must ignore silver and pretend

Its pulse quickens at the sight of gold

(Where did it acquire a pulse let alone

One that could plausibly quicken?

Must it have blood too then, and veins

And arteries to hold its blood and then

A body to hide veins and arteries and all?

It must.) Learn to swagger and sway, walking

With exaggerated care after long nights spent

Drinking down by the docks until two dim moons

Shake their heads and ask why you've not found

A certain scatter of unblessed bones.

EVERYWHERE

 

Used to ubiquity, God

Going up a hill

Nods to Himself 

Coming down 

But tells St. Lucina,

Who's walking with Him,

"Don't stop to talk;

We'll be here forever."