week of April 30 - May 6, 2007

A Man With No Teeth Serves Us Breakfast | I'd Like to Bake Your Goods | Stolen Mummies | Brendan Constantine is My Kind of Town
Up Liberty's Skirt | Feeding Holy Cats | Mowing Fargo | I'm a Jew, Are You? | Lizard King of the Laundromat | I Am My Own Orange County
Paris: It's The Cheese | Poetry Super Highway | Judaic Links | Rick's Bookmarks | Cobalt Poets
E-mail Rick | Other Cool Rick Stuff / Upcoming Readings | Who The Hell Is Rick

Like the Shadow of Your Hand 1 then you, seventeen year old newlywed I, your firstborn, red, crying, broken flower-- not the son you'd hoped for-- baby powder, goat's milk, carriage in the parlor steamy air, bluefish breath rough red hands orange juice & castor oil blue-eyed baby brother-- another then another! baseball, basketball, football lit up your eyes, not the paper doll wondering why-- so many spankings 2 the visit decades later, trying to dilute the bitter, my own children gone, we sit in the sunroom facing each other-- identical wicker love seats, talk food, doctors' appointments, names of medicines, price of eggs, old arguments hanging-- Sun snakes slither up the wall, spread onto the baker's rack, reflect the colors of the crystal vases and your blue-gray eyes. A snowman sweatshirt that used to fit hangs below your shoulders. You cough into a tissue, twist it into a ball. at eighty-seven, you clutch to a life you no longer enjoy, neither of us aware, in three weeks, I'll be kneeling at your grave 3 a call breaks through early morning dreams "she's dying" I dress in yesterday's clothes. Grab the keys. Strap myself into the Buick and back out the garage door, a spider web in the vent, the garbage-- everything left open. Rivers roar through my head. Light from the sodium lamps scatter the street revealing darkness. I am numb. Caught in the early morning silence. Not far off is thunder, hot stones crumbling Mother, I have lost you, & all unspoken promises. I place my face over your heart, find no beat-- not even a flutter, Your moth open, as if words caught in your throat, still want to be said. Outside the wind moans. 4 tomorrow I'll go to Elfindale Manor where you once lived. You'll be wearing blue slacks and fresh white shirt. We'll hug, kiss, smooth each other's hair. And we'll talk. Oh, how we'll talk! praying absolutions. Decision Lip pressed against steel, he did what he thought he had to do-- the cats hid under the bed, hot crimson jelling on desk chair rug orange embroidered "yadda yadda" pillow, the clock on his entertainment center now on my mantle

I Wanna Sleep Dance sweet baby! Shake that barbed wire nest of yours and lift your fat feet higher than the ground. Shuffle quickly to the back kitchen and drag Granny Chalteria away from that big,black kettle where she's boiling down my dreams and force her out here to dance. Clap your hands sweet baby! Knock those dusty knuckles together and HOWL at the top of your withered lungs. See my hooligan cousins who slouch drunken in the corner, sucking down Papa's juice and the whores they brought with them to steal my Mama's stockings? I want to go to bed, baby! Do me this favor and I will ask no more of you. Take the reins of this party and ride it until all four legs snap until the sun peeps between the curtains..enraged at the pile of dead bodies in the corner and Grampy having lost his choppers