Poem 1: Family Pet
Who doesn’t have good memories
of their family’s pet
Twiggy the gun metal miniature poodle
whose snout was too long for her
to compete in dog shows
so loving her tongue curled up
my nostrils when she licked me
not smart
a limited trick repertoire
but peppy,
her toenails clicking
On bare floor of kitchen
whenever we arrived home.
When she came home from grooming
she smelled like a cheap date
with the world’s worst perfume
cloying, a combo of rose and some flower
I did not know the name of,
my mother’s dog mostly,
she being a sixties housewife
home all day
and bearing her share
of past and current woe,
How much she loved that dog!
One day my father let the dog out
saying, “my friend does this.”
That first day out, someone brought
Twiggy’s lifeless body back.
Nothing changed really.
Whatever love my mother once had
for my father had already seeped out
an ancient oil drum
replaced with disdain, regret
our family’s happiness
A doomed ship.
She’d already retreated to her room
most of the day
most of the night
as remote as the farthest star.
POEM 3 Scenes From My Life, Fade In
Fade in
Eating beets
in a high chair
P.O.V. as seen from
Brooklyn apartment foyer,
I’m a Dr. Spock baby
My mommy maybe
Picks me up when I cry
So I feel in control
Although I’m not.
The withholding,
Holding in of
Emotions, hers,
bodily functions, mine,
Necessitates enemas
Administered on what seemed
to be or was
a near-daily basis.
Dare I overshare?
Song remembered (sung in
Brooklyn by some child):
My mother and your mother were
Hanging up some clothes
My mother punched your mother
Right in the nose
What color blood came out?
Green G-r-e-e-n.
Fast forward:
we live in a house
With a washer dryer and trees!
Wheeee I pump my legs
On tinny swing.
My sled stutters down
Snow clotted hills
Cars come cars go near me
But not too —
It’s a quieter time
or was, until Kennedy died.
Hopped up by the speed
But scared, I brake.
My cheeks red
Wind burnished.
Hold. Freeze frame.
This is of some moment
To be explained in a voice over
Later
Or by note to self.
The Civil Rights movement
comes, but I don’t know it.
Schwerner Goodman Liuzzo
Evers dead
Murdered.
Goodman lived
Three blocks away.
I didn’t know.
Did my parents know?
Why didn’t they tell me?
I needed to taste the dying ember
the slow death of hope
Or perhaps did.
My mother, ironing
Perpetually ironing
Growing large
Most days
Her door closed
Depressed
A sixties wife
Unmoored.
Jump cut, high school
I skip school,
Go to the Vietnam War Teach In
Mr. L. my teacher’s there.
Handsome, boot black hair.
Gay, they say.
An unexcused absence
For both of us.
The following day
I proffer my note
We smile, complicit.
I like Mr. Leach
Like the theater,
Go to The City to see
Sam Shepard plays.
More High School:
I’m a regular girl
Who girds herself like most girls do
With a girdle that
Curls up my thighs like kudzu
Sometimes I write
to famous people
Who write back:
Sammy Davis Jr.
Senator Jacob Javits
Who apologizes, says sorry
They don’t use girl pages in the
Senate.
A famous entertainment writer
Asks me to write his editor.
Got canned for some conflict
Which he says wasn’t.
I write the editor and feel important.
They still can him.
Fast forward years later
I interview him,
Bring a camera crew
Okay, one person,
But still, no longer famous,
he’s impressed.
Flashback:
Down the block a man in Brooklyn
Off Ocean Parkway Avenue Z
Has chickens.
Fresh eggs in Brooklyn.
The Dugan Man sells crumb cakes
from his Dugan Cart
Goes door to door to each apartment.
Convenient.
Fast forward or montage:
High school
A mass rally in Bryant Park
Against The War.
I’m with an exchange student
I met at a regional exchange club party
I’m chapter president.
He threads us through the crowd
Says he knows where we’re going
Goes to where people wear brass knuckles.
But nothing transpires,
It rarely does.
Now I wear a mask
A carapace
I dip
I dart, fancyish
I wear my invisibility like
A cloak
At times I shimmy it off
Damn, I like watching,
Absorbing life
As if it were sun
Sucking on myself
An incubus.
Poem 2:
He’s building his rocket ship, my boy,
small compact arm and elbow sweeping
over magnetic tiles
the colors of rainbow.
I’m going to Africa, he says but notes
the ship doesn’t have a door,
but he’ll get in,
we’ll all get in, Noah’s Ark-like,
a propos of today.
It rained all day this day,
hasn’t it for everyone at least once
or haven’t we felt
the desultory feeling
that the day will not abate.
thoughts overtaking our senses.
Or perhaps it will continue
day melding into day
the willows opening up
divulging their lesson that
greedy roots are like wanderers in the Desert
who do not believe
who do not believe the manna will come.
But not to worry,
he assures me,
and creates an entrance,
a hospital jury-rigged out of a convention hall.
What part of Africa is it in, I ask,
A desert?
Yes, he answers.
And what animals are in it?
A gila monster, he says,
a harsh creature
gulping down others whole
like this thing that elides over and through us now,
a storm cloud that presses on through a long tunnel
seemingly without surcease but then changes
into faint sun before twilight.
© James Cuebas: The School yard,
Silkscreen, 15″ X 22″, 2021