My Poetry

Shots were fired in Dallas three years before I was born one of the Baby Busters middle child misfit too young for Studio 54 too old for a mosh pit. Raised on a steady diet of television and Tang. Vietnam was a series of black & white images while drawing with crayons. Watergate was background noise while eating TV dinners. Lying on our bellies chins resting in our hands we waited every Sunday for Tinkerbell to let us in to Disney’s wonderful world. We carried The Force in our back pockets and lived the Wonder Years on a white Huffy with the banana seat- nobody had a helmet everybody had a latchkey. After school we watched the Brady Bunch dreamed of Walton's Mountain and grieved for the perfect family. We never wore saddle shoes or poodle skirts nose rings or bellybutton things. Individuality was our conformity.  We were there when Disco drew its last breath and gave birth to  the MTV Generation. We saw the Berlin Wall crumble like Jericho and watched the Gulf War from a c...

"ain’t no doubt about it we were doubly blessed ‘cause we were barely seventeen and we were barely dressed.”                        *                        *                        *                        * The radio played in the darkness of his mom’s garage. He stood before me and stuck out his tongue to make me giggle. “I didn’t do nothin’” he told me and stuck it out again. He pressed me against the washing machine before moving his lips over my neck in a series of kisses each of them  sparked something unknown and primal something older than w...

Monet could have flavored the sky with saffron, ginger, cinnamon or whispers of mint but he left it unadulterated vanilla for children whose taste buds are still chaste fat and pink not yet spoiled by the bitter-sweet of spiced sunsets. __________________________________________ I just watched the video on Youtube of you sharing the Monet prints in your home. You have great taste in art. How generous of you to share it with your fans.  After seeing the video, I wanted to send you a little poem I wrote about Monet's painting Vanilla Sky.  I don't know much about art, but I adore Monet. I particularly love his juxtaposition of colors and how he did multiple works of the same view at different times of day to study how light affects color.   If I had to choose, (it's Monet, who can really choose?) I think his water lily series is my favorite. 

I got my hair cut like Dorothy Hamill when I was nine and I would try to spin gracefully on my roller skates like the Olympian on ice- but the secret to skating ability wasn’t in some follicles. I stood next to him at the bicentennial parade watching my older sister twirl a baton long blond hair bouncing with a starched smile like a Barbie doll in a red, white and blue sequined, body suit. His smile was toothy like Donny Osmond’s. Thirteen, with brown hair and a crooked nose where his father broke it two years ago- a going away present. I squeezed between him and my sister on the tailgate of Grandpa’s blue, Ford Falcon. Eyes trained as flaming geysers splashed the sky fireworks sizzled and popped loud as my heart’s thrum before they fizzled and died. He was the only one on the block who could out run me which meant he would catch me every time I stole his baseball cap. Grab me by the back of the shirt as he closed in behind laughing, he’d snatch it back our daily ritual. He was my one ...

  Summer Nights A poem bubbles in me peroxide on an open wound. I simmer in the humidity of lost summers. Childhood summers melt together like crayons left in the yard. When I was eleven, summer nights were hide-n-seek and sneaking into the garage with a boy four years older than me. The warmth of his hands was like the first taste of grapefruit sprinkled with sugar but then it all goes sour. Summer tears burn worse than bare feet on hot asphalt. Now the nights are sticky too sticky even for sex, so we lie nude, barely touching we ache for relief. Longing vibrates from deep inside like the reedy resonance of a Native flute. There is beauty in desire and in reaching for each other in mild minutes before sunrise. On the front porch cigarette smoke curls. June bugs cling to the screen door and hiss when it slams. They remind us how to laugh. _________________________________________ The cigarette smoke was from my ex. I've never been a smoker.  The summers in upstate NY are so hu...

Time Pieces Frustrations wound too tight angrily twisted our words before he rushed out the door leaving me alone hands clenched in the face of advancing moonlight. How many times will we pass under the night without counting the stars? How many hours will we watch life tick by without living ours? Emotions working overtime strive to unwind from the mainspring that dictates with the sharp punch of its card. We wait for the two-for-one sales to stock up on desires manufactured on Venus and Mars with no time out for each other. So, we fight to connect as we cling to separate Pendulums slaving for the Sands that demand a lifetime contract. ________________________________________ This is an old one from when my ex-husband and I were newly weds. We worked at the same place, I worked days and he worked nights. We never got to see each other. 

Misogynist She shouldn't need to consult cards or gaze into crystal balls to figure him out. He is cellophane stretched over her face and she isn’t even fighting for air. She lies still as a corpse for him to allow her a breath.   (he waits a little longer                           each time) His eyes are sand dunes His embrace stiff as a cigar store Indian. His heart is a hollow drum beat. In his twisted games, he tells her that the sun is the moon and she’s beginning to believe him. He turns things upside down twists them inside out soaks them in Bud punches holes right through memories. He spins things round and round until she’s puking her guts out like inconvenient facts begging him to forgive her  for what he did again. _________________________________ "The sun is the moon," is an allusion to The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare....