It was not Wonder Bread I offered
when I told you I was tired
of sleeping alone,
but Dark Jewish Hand
Made Russian
Wry that
only; over time,
leeched its flavor

alone
in your restless darkness
I tired of trying to
unhinge your jaw,
release your tongue,
open your eye,
relax your brain,
let go your hips,
let slide from your shoulders
everything
but love
finally
I gave up
imagining

your clutching
could bring
my juices
to wine
or that your sour waters
were turning fragrant
to soften your secrets,
open your heart-chambers
no bedroom could
unlock you

Oh, but you see, it was so much
of not any one thing...
a feast left uneaten
you
offering so much,
but never delivering the one thing
I WANTED
YOUR LOVE
not just your pulsing
pleasure to hold
against the coming mourning.

ii.
Goddess of knight,
Mad-Woman in light,
I played the parts
you projected
that hid my more versatile faces,
faces that looked like
a man,
or an elf,
or perhaps a bird that
you placed my limbs
outside you,
until one day
I took flight
from the strained and weighted branch
of our life, heavy
with children the eldest-- you, husband
a circular speaking stranger,
your heart, an amazing maze,
your face a sexy hunger.

You brought me a dowry of
sticky water, laundry mountains
stale coffee cups, half -eaten
apples on bathroom counters

your depression flooded our home
became an obstacle course
of carpenter’s tools and mud,
a fortress 'gainst joy
grew all 'round these feet,
too small for my short but muscular legs.
I dreamed they were stumps
that rooted me into housewife:
married to the house
and your cigarette-breath lies
your oxygen crowding compliments

stomping, belching, farting,
constant complaints
they crashed my home until
one day
twenty
years!
late and tired--
my mid-life's dark blood
hit the walls.

I crawled out from under bathroom tiles
that mourning, I heaved up my life
onto the couch, and phoned my Mother
in Connecticut, demanding
"Come get me!"


the memo left on your
answering machine
to open your deaf ears, cried
"Dyanu!"
(enough is enough!).

Divinely, my mother, had
obedient, houndlike senses
trained to detect potential
breast-cancer
amongst what was left
her four sensitive daughters.


efficiently she said, "I hear you,"
and without more
questions,
(for this story had long ago led to this
conclusion),
MY 78 year old mother
rented a U-Haul
that very day and brought
her daughter home!

I, the rescued
wife/woman/girl (in that order,)
had a deceased father
who'd made me leave home
before I was grown

because I’d been sleeping with boys.

Time, however,
has blessed me
with new leavings
and Dad's Ghost reached me, a
touch a breeze brushed,
warmed into my right side
as I was out shopping for a new life
and I heared his voice
as if he were mortal right then, crying:
"Honey, Welcome Home."