A Heart Wrenching Story

When Shorty came into the third grade after summer vacation
and showed us the purple scar down the middle of his chest,
like a ten inch drip of congealed grape juice, we all wanted
to touch the welt, but decided it might squirt from the pressure.

Shorty laughed and told us he'd sliced himself wide open with
a butter knife just to see if he really had a heart. He said
he'd held it in his hand for over a minute and watched it beat
before he chucked it back inside and sewed himself up.

He was tough, ole Shorty. That's why it kinda surprised us when
Mrs. Lofgren made him stay inside at recess, because of his heart.
How'd she know what he'd done? Besides, we needed him. Last
year he flew around the bases faster than any other kid in class.

A month later, when they faced us at his funeral, his parents
didn't have the heart to hear our theory that maybe
he'd shoved it in backwards.

Salt Licks

Salt Licks

When I pour the crystals over my stew
she says I use too much. She says
my arteries will harden like stone, and
I'll look back, one day, to find that
my blood is frozen in the pillar I've become.

She frowns when I relate my childhood flights
down through the cholla cactus and Joshua trees
to the goat pen, with its juniper shade, where
I ran my pink tongue over the salty-smooth
depressions mined into their crystalline cakes.

"Why would anyone want to lick salt and goat spit?"
She shudders at the thought and edges
the salt shaker out of my reach. I want to tell her
that my craving carries over from the quest
to weigh my worth against its bitter taste.

So I start to stutter, trying to describe
the palimpsest scars of a father's belt-buckle-bite,
and she weeps with my frustration. And I lean in
to kiss away the dampness on her cheek,
already savoring the salt caught in her tears.

We sit

We sit

We sit at the cafe table,
the sun warming our wit,
sipping lattes, frapuccinos,
expounding philosophic,
delighting ourselves
and maybe our listeners.

I tell mine
he is merely laminate layers,
experience that accumulated
into a world called his name,
and thus, he is cliched.

I tell him
his words are nothing
but synthesized sums
of all the authors
and philosophers he's read.

I love the intelligent timbre
of my voice
and my knowing nod
as he leans in,
listening, acquiescing,
learning this idea,
which diminishes him.

I smile
as he confides his fear of
delivering inarticulate drivel
into the ears of others.

I tell him to relax,
words will come
after the jumble of voices
inside his head
bake into his own.

Finally, I
bequeath my brilliance
with a memorized line from
Bartlett's Book of Quotations.

In Oz

In Oz

The Mexican gardener rakes leaves across
my shadow on the grass and bends down
to stuff the cuttings into a canvas sack while
I watch him work. His pregnant wife drags
the debris toward their car, but the cloth tears,

and I see leaves pouring a golden path
over my emerald lawn until she too notices
and stoops to scrape the trail back into the bag,
using the shovel of her hands, as tears silently
slide down her chestnut cheeks to her bosom.

I wonder if he'll help her, and he does,
then returns to apologize for her outbreak.
"She is worried because the baby comes in a month
and we have no money for the doctor.
But it will work out. I tell her that," he says.

I want to help and detect that their garments are worn,
so I tell him to wait while I march inside to retrieve
the old clothes my wife means to throw out. When
I return, he smiles and pulls a pair of ruby heels out
of the sack for his wife and slips his boots off

to ease into my old oxfords. They are a perfect fit.
Later, I find his footwear leaned against a tree
and shove my curious foot into one of his boots
but discover it is several sizes too big and, suddenly,
I feel like a child trying on his father's shoes.

Oranges

Oranges

The boys at work laughed when I told them
how I tasted the essence of orange on your tongue
last night as we kissed and yearned to peel back
your cover and bury my face in the citrus scent
to quench my thirst.

At lunch,
Bob Ratvy shined a quarter section of nectarine
from his mouth, sucking and slobbering as he wrapped
his hairy arms around me. Jimmy Smith called me
a fruitcake and stroked the banana he held at his crotch
until it squirted onto the floor in a mashed pulp.

After lunch, a sweet ambrosia blew off Heather's
creamy skin as she lingered by the fan, glistening
like a fresh-cut peach in July.

But I desire oranges
and can't wait to get home.

On Mercedario at 21,000'

On Mercedario at 21,000'

The birds do not sing up here where the cold
rolls drifts of confidence into frozen
moments of indecision. Here the black-
suited crows tighten their feathered belts
like silent pallbearers, waiting to lift
bits flesh up from the dead bodies before
the chill makes the meat immortal. Here they
crowd together, measuring the distance
between our energy and exhaustion
while we struggle to puncture the white horizon.

I watch their hunkered huddle, wondering
if they've been fed since the last Incan offering
ascended these slopes centuries ago.

Speed Dating

Speed Dating

"Definitely not marriage material," Angelica muttered, folding her Christian Dior sunglasses and sliding them into a pocket of her Louis Vuiton purse. Not with his crazy haystack of red hair, those freckles, and that droopy right eye that seemed to twitch every time she glanced across the table.

And the odor! She wrinkled her nose. My god, had he just stepped off the farm? The barnyard aroma preceded him by a good ten feet when he walked through the room to meet her.

Angelica noticed a tiny piece of lint on her new black, Vera Wang dress and flicked it onto the floor with a perfectly manicured nail. Sighing, she pushed her chair back, picked up her purse, and rose to leave. Why waste the time? They were probably all like this one -- losers. A quick scan of the room confirmed her suspicions.

He stood up, his hand out to shake. "But we haven't even exchanged names," he said, reaching over the table.

"Why bother?" Angelica scowled, stepping back to size him up. She glanced down at his shoes. Could it be? Her breath quickened. Were those $750 Gianni Versaces peeking out from under the ragged cuffs of his faded Levis?

Hmmm. . .

Maybe he deserved a closer look.