Poems I'm working on

In the Garage

Gray tennis shoes kick
At piled laundry on the concrete floor.
His hands point and fly.
She looks at the liver spots
Along his temple, listening with pressed lips.
Whorls of steam rise between them,
Bringing a soap smell.
He pulls his glasses off his nose for
His final point and waits.
A sigh. Many quiet beats.

Her hands slide off her hips,
One of them waves at him
Like a brown wrinkled flag.
She turns and opens the washing machine
To throw wet dollops of clothing
Into the open mouth of the dryer.
He stares at her back and then walks
Past the refrigerator and the weight machine
To his work bench. His head bends down
As she leaves and shuts the door.



Gold Lexus

I took your arm that night,
Your solid gray jacket suddenly
Too close to my side.
So we drove to the Yogurtland on Harbor
In your gold Lexus.

You’d look at the road,
And then turn to glance at me.
I nodded, smiled, and
Watched your neatly trimmed hands
Cradle the steering wheel.

I listened to John Mayer’s
Electric guitar wail as you talked.
You talked of so many things!
Of the visions and revisions
Of being an artist, of creating life.

I’d yawn and watch
The blue line of our GPS route and the red dot
Of the gold Lexus moving in real time.
I shivered on the leather seat
And shut the air vents.


I’d stare at your thick lips and potato-shaped nose,
Remembered the photography lesson
In the back lot of Target.
My digital Kodak shuddered
At your 35 mm SLR camera.
Shuddered at those five pictures you have of me.

Mayer’s grainy voice sang of trains that never stop,
Broken hearts that dreamed.
So I didn’t notice when still talking
You drove past Harbor
And we never made it back.