ash wednesday/ 3/29/17
what sort of city lies bottomless, when
in our minds there’s no way to keep
the balance, we stumble because what
sort of city life picks up broken men, then
finds dirt behind furniture
day after day, week after week
what sort of city refuses to say good bye,
after seeing the great exit door close, never again
to open when the sort of women behind it grab love
w/ out warrant or permission
running out of breath, long
before discovering
few men surrender, very few
tho we see spring stitched on socks,
on determined gals’ excited faces,
on the way their hair shines, and
on fresh cotton clothes
ash wednesday is spotless
but not until thursday, will
she remember walking into the
church, scrounging for yesterday’s
leftover ash
(a) blot / august 2021
two arms in a blaze of broadway sun
speckle in spots before your eyes,
and you cant, no matter how
hard you push, stem
the overwhelming tide of aging-
can you make what has happened,
unhappen? can you replace diminished love
when the fulgurous sapphire loses its sparkle?
omg, the bar for happy nowadays is terribly low
yet presently, on a shady patch of sidewalk
there’s such delight in a reminder
of past years on a woman
wearing autumn colors-
and in the haze of ebbing summer
for a minute you are steeped
in so much, breathless
young love, which
right now is a blot
to be bullseyed
but missed
‘we can change reality just by the way we look at it’ science says
the old woman who could be popular at night,
hates his sleep; they aren’t ‘juntos’
and he’s prissy, rolled up,
shrouded like a mummy
in their quilt
and she doesn’t like his aloneness
keeping life at bay, he stores the world
in numbered jars, more the documentarian
than the artist
w/passion, one day
she’ll shake him awake, tear
him apart, a trunk and four limbs
dusting the floor w/nothing but straw
he’ll show her
night visitor jan. / 2018
i sense he’s here, in my bed
underneath twisted pillows
that are moist w/sweat
in baking heat,
the perfect doughboy
rolled and tufted under my chest
stuffed between my thighs,
yet refusing
to rise
before, whoosh…
it’s morning, w/an
odor i suspect
that’s close to death
© Ellen Aug Lytle
corners / dec. 9, 2018
‘this is what i know: people’s hopes go on forever’
junot diaz (from ‘this is how you lose her’)
it’s waking these days from afternoon naps
with the whole world inside your head
you are not where you are, but in a
remote outpost, with underfed
donkeys stalled in the sun
after stumbling rock ledges
so dry from drought, brush
turns into weaponry, that
pierce and sting
the restaurant where you eat breakfast serves
dry cereal or white toast, margarine and cows milk
sleet leaps off cars on a frozen hi way, the only motel
for miles, even in winter, has bugs-
you are not back in the nyc apt. brushing your teeth
you are still somewhere discarded yet dicey
somewhere laced with slimy black mold
in corners where they think no-one
bothers to look
but you do
the craziness begins when mom
stops
buying nabisco social teas
early summers all look the same
in second rate auburndale*
but not the summer
carmen calli, wearing a lacey dress and
veiled hat, walks thru their tiny trellised garden
on her way to ‘our lady of the most blessed sacrament’
she lost her baby, neighbors said, while
the loganberry trees, dripping sweetness like
blood, cover the potholed streets where we live
in two family houses
scenting the afternoon that smacks
against us, honeysuckle mixes w/ adults
nets of crickets and bees, that buzz the berries
we stuff in our mouths
thicken, as heat swipes the fallen
fruit grinding into a mat of purple pulp
and skin, and we play
‘a, my name is alice…’ w/Spaulding ‘hi bouncers’
and carmen calli waits for another baby
*northeast flushing