February 1-7, 2016: Sam Silva and Gayle Kaune

Felicia Lights Farts A Final Summer

A little burn of the heart
in those days
of moons which were certainly blue
over punked orange hair

…milk and serial tears,
inexpensive art
that you bought
while you sold a few
…over there….

And before you were twelve
you knew cheap sex
like the going to high school kids knew
"what’s love got to do with it"
young and cool
that fool’s great wisdom
that illicit affair
between numbers one
and two.

Massage
-on receiving a treatment with “Essential Oils”

It is in this massage room,
the smoothing of my skin,
as if this body mattered,
Esther brings the vials
from the table, rubs Myrrh
the ribboned length of my spine –
so much caring in these gestures:
the winding cloths,
the hot towels she places
on my back, the oiled movement
of fingers and palms.
I am breathing into sleep.
Exodus I, Exodus II
the healing essence
of the Three Wise Men
placed on my crown.

I am swimming

while my father is being cremated.
“When?” I asked the mortician,
“About three,” he replied, so I am
doing laps from two-thirty until three-thirty.
I want to be under water when it happens.
Not breathing outside air, his air,
with shallow breaths
but here, in this concrete room,
taking huge gasps
then holding.
Like his breathing at the end:
in,
and what seemed hours later,
out,
then the longest pause and
in,
again.

My laps keep building
and I take in the air diving
while my father’s body burns.

His spirit left immediately,
the mouth open,
skin turned white.
Still, the shell that carried him,
our pod, our carapace, our fine container,
made its final journey by minivan hours ago,

and I am not at home waiting,
not down by the river praying,
nor at the office working,
I am here, underwater,
holding my breath
as long as
I can.


Self Portrait with Childhood

Childhood was the thing I painted
large as myth, unstable as the sand dunes
at Goshorn Lake. Yes, there was Mother
in her knotty pine kitchen, and yes,
once she slapped my hands
with her wooden spoon.
I didn’t care, she was Hera, queen
of the home fires. I loved her.

And when I was mother I missed her,
hid my grief in poems the color of camouflage,
browns and dirty greens, those were the lines
that came closest to truth, though how I loved
summer days sitting under the Katsura tree
while my own children ran through the sprinklers.

Yes, Mother spoke to me alive and dead, saying,
Those were the best years.” And yes, she has always
been my center. Like a protractor pointed
to the heart that rings out in concentric circles,
her joys became mine, her selfless love
a stab that still draws blood.