Sunday, October 28, 2007

On the Give and Take Shelf

Getting out of the elevator
I see a pair of feet, then naked legs, a hip, a torso.
On the give and take shelf, where
we discard our coats, hats, and outgrown toys,
I find a manikin. Her head has a crack where
there's a velcro strip for wigs.
This brings to mind other bodies seen this year
including those in movies who pretend
to die like the little girl
whose doctor father must call on others
before he tends to her diptheria.
She turns her eyes away from her mother
whose heart is breaking. She dies.
Her chest beneath her white gown
moves up and down with breathing.

On the give and take shelf the manikin wears nothing
on its hard plastic skin.
Its eyes are open.




Saturday, July 14, 2007

In South Carolina


We went to Huntington Beach where many families were cooking barbecue in big metal drums, and sitting in the shade. A family of five, three of the girls under the age of ten, wearing identical sailor dresses came bouncing out of the car.
A little girl with a blond ponytail exited the sea and marched up to her mother her arms swinging back and forth as if dancing, her steps springing, to ask that her boogie board be tied around her wrist.

She then took the board, laid down face down on it in the shallow water and waited for the board to be immersed in the water and the water to lap over her.
Later, her grandmother, with an identical blond ponytail (her mother also sported the same hair style, under her plastic visor) agreed to pull the girl through the water as she sat on the board.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Waiting for the train, 14th St. #1

The rat was fat and healthy. He ambled down the tracks in no particular hurry. We who were waiting for trains could see him clearly. The train did not come right away so as we waited we got to see the rat slowly amble back with a long strip of pretzel in his teeth. At first I thought it might be a bit of construction for his house he was building. It was that tall and that straight, but would a rat bother carrying his tools to the site? He was surely well enough off to hire someone else to do that. This load was for the family supper. It was a substantial feast.

Soon the train came. I turned to the man at my left and asked if he saw it. Oh yes he said I did see that.