the widows of pittsburgh

today

some late bills, charity solicitations, raisin bran

for breakfast.

it’s okay, here-

i had to leave there. it was just-

well, this is where the widows

of Pittsburgh go.

11, breakfast endures,

third time through the Pittsburgh gazette,

same sad faces furrowing the same

concerned brow.

three minute loop

doodles our circular

tales in different colored

pens and sometimes capitalized letters.

oh look here,

Sport on the fridge!

55 years, can you believe it?

don’t tell anyone! I just can’t believe we were together

for so long. I must be getting old!

a military collar,

greys and browns smiling back,

what straight teeth.

how long ago did he die again, dear?

through squinty eyes

three longing fingers

check the wrinkled paper

for a pulse,

pressing his chest,

collapsing in exhaustion

over his face,

after years of attempted resuscitation,

or appropriate commemoration.

6 years.

That long? Oh it just kills me.

three minutes pass and

her stare goes blank,

why these fingers,

draped with such melancholy

over this increasingly unfamiliar face.

up and opens the door

just checking for something.

rotten eggs and mysterious apple sauce

say

hello? good morning!

time, time marches on.

dls

the breakfast game

breakfast

was baked

eggs

this morning

next to miniature

plates of

sugared almonds

and small bowls

of blood orange

peels

with heavy cream

slowly marbling

in dark coffee

as 9 grain

toast popped

up asking

for maple butter

and slow news

in the sunday times.

and no phone

calls today,

too, please,

they'll only

be replete with

caffeinated tales

of prosciutto wrapped

baked eggs that

look like cupcakes

on top of melty sourdough

toast-

not our

typical breakfast

game.

dls

Summary of Meaning of Poem in Succinct Phrase or Reference to Poem or Allusion to Concept or Image Related to Poem

Expression of how I'm currently feeling
or have been feeling for some time
or recent thoughts and sensations
or memory of past experiences
using images and objects and words
whose sounds I like, whose sense appeals to me,
juxtaposed, following some version of poetic form.
Expression of the ego. Appeal to higher meaning,
attempt at philosophical statement.
Secret message to friends, reference to events of day,
particularly breakfast
because that is the theme of the series.

CDL

what research shows

a birch tree shimmers
outside in metallic shades
of grey and gold,
because November rings the 11^th
bell in the 12 steps out of trauma
into bareness,
or better,
clinically that is.

each leaf is a tear
cascading down the cheek of
some nothing,
and what are tears
anyways?
besides steps 3-6
on the treasure map
behind the clipboard?

leaves are just soft music
dropped beats
slivered sunshine
drops of gold.
i love them and i miss them
already even when they are still
here lush gardens of temporal forest
falling from an infinite sky or heaven above
as rich firmament catches their elusive ways
on their inevitable fall
and you I love as well i know
i will i am just
waiting
for step 12,

when the
leaves will
have dropped.

for now I wake up next to
a birch tree
singing me sweet lullabies
to go back-
back to sleep
live in dreams
slither under a comforter
of wet leaf piles
and stop taking
steps to
a pot of gold
when these leaves
shimmer better than
what you’ll find at the
end of any rainbow,
or step 12
in a game of hop scotch
to happiness.


dls

giggle:

i google

searched him,

found him,

sunshock hair and

megawatt smile

because otherwise

he's not real,

just a shoulder

i didn't

touch.

cvp

i love breakfast

I wonder why

sometimes things like the

Persian word for plate

get stuck in my head -

everyday things and yet

extraordinary

(bosh qu'ab, and click the Q),

build the

backbeat to the

thoughts that don't seem to

have coalesced all semester,

no spinal cords

for coherent essays and

exercises in

ideas. Idea:

open up - Idea:

breathe up - the air after

Sterling on Cross

Campus is crisp and

clean like only

air, or water, or the

Beatles. Full moon

soon. At the gate,

a bowl of cereal sits

abandoned, an

offering to the

Gods of

whimsy?

CVP

does no
one eat
break fast
any more?

(today an
asiago cheese
bagel and
pine apple,
exotic)

poems need
not be
so difficult
as papers.

EWV

The Brussels Sprouts

Wait: for that time of year when the ground is hard
and the sky is lower on the horizon than it has ever been—when you can see
the crows roosting in the empty trees. Then go to your garden and
walk among the plants.

Here you will find spoiled greens (burned yellow
by the frost). But others
will be tight and sweeter for the cold.
Among these is the brussels sprout.

How shall you approach it?
First, strip the shaggy leaves—
expose the brussel heads. Next, grip the stalk
and wrench it up. As you like
take pruning shears and cut away the roots.

Bring this crook, with its thick knobs and
leafy periwinkles, back inside your home. Are things
where they were? Wash it. Scrub away the dirt,
loose leaves, and insects.

We are ready to twist off the sprouts. Your fingers are strong
enough for this: pop each knot, pull away the outer leaves,
collect them in a pot. Rinse, again. I’m sorry I still have your steamer.

Steam them, lightly. Just until the curls are bright
green in the heat. While they cook, fetch garlic from the basket
by the bay window. Remember to crush the cloves with the flat of the blade,
before dicing.

You once told me that you loved the smell of cooking garlic
more than anything. Mix with butter, lemon, salt—
drizzle over the brussels sprouts. It was the wind today
that made me think of you and last November.

good morning to you

i woke up

with a carpet burned back

and memories from world war ii—

what an awful war world war ii

was, I exhale with my grandmother’s

faraway look of nostalgia for

how bad everything

was. different times, she whispers

to herself.

three alarms set in intervals

of four minutes

allow for insightful discoveries

in the endless exploration of damp and dark caves

that make up the past—

mine, or hers or his and theirs or ours.

and here in these caves

my touch is like mida’s

but everything here is behind glass walls

like my dear aunt’s china collection

that sits uselessly in her dining room,

purposefully placed for continuous lusting.

another one rings,

and i am still searching for a thesis

to link his how did I get away

with that and my

giggleless manifesta to an audience

with watches on their left wrists

and the paragraph in the world briefing

from the congo yesterday

in addition to the summary of the continuance

of settlements freckling the cheek

of a one day Palestinian state

of peace.

snooze once more because

the leaves outside smiled the other day

in a variety of oranges

and now they are dancing—

twirling without gravity

above tussled hair and hands on hats

and their twister spins

don’t need a partner to lead

or a caller to call—

they just tuck and dive

spin and grin,

i bet they even close their eyes.

pathetic fallacy

strikes again as another alarm

enters my half dreamed dance floor in the

sky and i wonder if i am sad because i

miss him—

or these sudden

flashback to the war and sport’s

letters from japan where he

would have died if we

hadn’t bombed hiroshima,

my mother told me once. so many people

died there, i sigh.

racing the on call clocks

I squeeze my eyes shut

like bulldozers knocking over intricately

doodled caves where lights suddenly

go out. I didn’t even do a roll call this

time, didn’t even check to see if bodies

remain,

like those Chilean miners.

I wonder what they thought about—

in all that darkness for all those days.

feet up, for the future awaits;

sneakily it slips through my veins into

a history i will try to write down

tomorrow morning upon the beeping

of my first alarm

and sum up with very conclusive thoughts in the fat part of the

triangle in my conclusion paragraph--

instead of an inside treasure map of

a web, a maze, a veritable labyrinth

a coast with an infinite length,

a cave with too many contours

making too many shadows--

simple sentences

that makes sense

to me.

dls