MY FATHER

 

 

 

was a cowboy.

My father was a sugar man.

My father was a teamster.

 

My father was a Siberian tiger.

My father was a lamb.

My father was a horse’s ass.

 

My father had a triple bi-pass.

My father was a rat but he bought

me my first hat. My father

 

believed in decency and fair play.

My father drove the getaway.

My father was a blue jay.

 

My father drove the boys away.

My father drove a Skylark,

then a Sunray. My father drove

 

hard bargains ever day;

he was a force. My father

was mercurial. He was passive,

a little moody: rock... paper....

scissors.  He loved me.

He loved me not.

 

He stomps and hurls lightning

bolts. Taught me to pray.

Has slipped away.

 

Because of my father, I hoard things

in a shoe box. Because of my father,

I use botox. Because of my father,

 

I look to clocks. Because of my father

I know how to oil the gate;

have never folded a map. Because

 

of my father, I have no use for similes.

Because of my father, I hunger for

my own catalog of metaphors.

 

 

(for Doris Schnabel)

EASY ON THE EARS

(for Arlyn García-Perez)

My eager friend, always dramatic and redolent

with sensual luxury, has traded in her ballet crush

for a trembling Siberian tiger. Rimsky-Korsakov,

Tchaikovsky, and his voice are noted,

but much after Hvorostovsky’s tight black jeans,

his thick belt, shiny gray shirt and trademark

mane. She was clearly delighted

that there was no pit between the stage

and her seat. She reports, without missing

a beat, that he smiled broadly the first

and every subsequent time that she took

out her opera glasses and used them.

“. . . his baritone a balalaika.

I could see everything about him

from my vantage point below.”