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Four Poemsby
Casualene Just
her name caused strain. This
young Mormon woman still
young, carrying child her
rules-- a
diet of various beans made her painfully thin— bony
blue, skeletal. She
knew more about literature than the professors did, especially
Shakespeare. This
made up for her coyness, lack
of eye contact and
unwillingness to talk about sex during
classes when I’d pull out the Song of Solomon or Sappho. When
I cross into the Magnolia State the
speed limit increases for
a reason--there’s less going on. Except
for a migration of these homes on wheels, not
trailer homes but actual houses too
fat for their lane. She and her husband bought one. I heard her anticipating its arrival from Florida like
a crate of navel oranges. This
home would be their ark roll
through five states and many lanes to
Utah. So
I’m slowing up on
a house not bending with the highway and
curse whoever is at the controls as
my car is forced to kiss the shoulder. I
look into the kitchen window hoping
for Casualene at the sink-- perhaps
singing to her child. While
I pass the living room Where
it’s quiet. There
she writes no longer about King Lear or Ruth but
of making love in this home while it moves out of Mississippi.
Notification
I sit down in the office. Kids'
colored blocks scatter the floor beneath
framed diplomas hanging above the
pipe collection, and the view of
drizzly downtown New Orleans. I'm
always late. The
moment he says early retirement (soon
for New England) I'm
floating lottery balls. Water
wells behind his glasses, while
the spinning siren goes off – in in
my chest – in all my different faces observed
by him. I regard
his expression
in the leather chair trusted
over twelve years, my doctor.
Elegy for Eugenia This parade at dusk should be named for
you. You, not Iris or Venus fed me southern ambrosia, Waldorf salad. These
same floats every year made of tinsel toss
trinkets to tourists who wave and hail in
front of your small estate. And it is on this balcony, woven with
ivy where you are wheeled watching
carnival pass its time alongside
the flambeaux where
doubloons like change ting the pavement. It takes little effort to patrol the neutral ground snagging a string of beads like an angry gar— purple,
green, gold. color
of King’s cake, a
gesture of your lasting bruise unwilling
to turn its season. But
you can’t see me between
the currents of shadow in
your yellow blouse sipping
a whiskey sour my
Queen of New Orleans.
Sailing
Lake Pontchartrain My
old man barefoot on the tiller heels
a starboard tack towards
West End past people crabbing with
chicken wings off the seawall. The
Bennetts bring Chianti
and quiche. We
eat with our hands spilling
wine on the teak as
the Ferris wheel's lights
disappear on Elysian Fields like
wave over wave. Joan,
dizzy with wind, smiles
and closes her eyes-- her
hair falls until it almost skims
the water. She
has to use the ladies' and
grabs the backstay unzips
her khaki chinos painting
into the green lake, her
glassy incandescence.
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