Juice Read online

  Hot Sake Breath

  You stick your chopsticks up your nose,

  make like a panda making like a walrus

  and I make dubious haikus

  from our sweet slips of fortunes

  for we are a duo of stows

  on a slow rocking ferry in a strait.

  Sea slaps the starboard behind our backs

  like weak applause

  or two Canada geese taking off for where else

  but.

  Passengers figure on the quay. They mimic

  sugar maples in Manasquan

  or a beech forest in Cape Henlopen. Wisps

  are fingering their scarves. They are waving

  over here, over here, more to the,

  over here. But we drift,

  lull like two swallows in a styrofoam cup

  on the Harlem or two duck breasts

  in a styrofoam take-home carton on the Hudson.

  We,

  in last tangles of cold sesame noodles

  getting noodlier with the motion.

  Win Win

  Last time I felt for keys in a stranger’s pocket,

  I won a new car. It was a DeSoto. Big as a house.

  I let the stranger live in it until I got the title.

  By then the new DeSotos had come out.

  With two now to my name, I let the stranger keep

  the one I’d won since he’d already tuned the engine

  and the radio to All Sinatra All the Time.

  My prize DeSoto was now a year older, but then

  so were we. Don’t you love when things work out?

  Don’t you love the feel of genuine red leather?

  Suburban Pastoral

  It’s the perfect time of the year for evenings.

  You, home from your desk in the big building.

  Me, from the bench by the pond in the park.

  Table’s on all fours in the kitchen. Wine

  breathes through its mouth.

  Music like no music sweeps in off the porch swing.

  A loaf cools. Butter puddles.

  We are finally beside us.

  What’s left and right in the world.

  Four

  Practicing Medicine

  My doctor asks me why I’m here today.

  He always starts our visits playing dumb.

  Word is he asked me that when I was born!

  My answer hasn’t changed. Perhaps he hopes

  by now I’m feeling better. Perhaps this is a trick.

  I want to be adult about it. I tell him I am feeling

  a little funny all over. He gives me little pills

  that look like buttons. Last time he gave me pills

  that looked like Tiddlywinks. They made me jumpy.

  I stick these new ones on my shirt. My chest feels

  less congested! Those who know me say my pallor

  has improved. I guess it’s all in how you take things.

  The Resonance in Magnetic

  How still she holds through all

  the bangs and knocks, supinely

  on the sled-like slab inside the giant

  O. I watch as the technician images

  more than I could ever have

  imagined of my mother’s cerebellum,

  cortex, lobes. I see the what

  in what makes talking on the phone

  and baking cookies simultaneously

  successful. The where in why she had

  my father take his hat and shoes off

  on the porch. The when in how

  she knew her life was good despite

  the suffering. The who in who

  her soul was, is and is to be. I see

  an earth, black dots and white infinities.

  Within a convolution of the occipital,

  her very first thought of me.

  Remedial

  I am sitting in my ENT’s waiting room.

  Three kids are playing on the floor.

  The boy with a book

  has been staring at a page for a while now.

  He moves his finger over something.

  I look at a book the same way sometimes.

  I ask if it’s a good book. He hands it up to me.

  I get down on the floor beside him

  and begin reading aloud. The other two children

  stop what they’re doing and join us.

  Staff comes out from behind closed doors

  and clamors for an empty chair.

  Everyone gets one. The chairs are not musical.

  When I’ve finished, the staff goes back to their stations.

  The kids go back to their playing.

  My sinus pressure has diminished significantly.

  The ringing in my ears is down to a tinkle.

  My throat is clear enough to take to the streets,

  to read abroad even.

  Birder

  My ophthalmologist points to where

  I put my chin and once it’s there,

  he swivels in with his View-Master apparatus.

  See any geese, Doc?

  Was that a starling smashed into my lens?

  I think a swallow mudded up my lower lid.

  No way a nuthatch

  upside down there on my retina!

  Doc, your light’s so bright.

  Just like the sun I told you I stared into

  when I went looking for the cedar waxwing

  that ate out of my palm,

  pooped in my hair until I donned a hat.

  Cat got your tongue, Doc? Doc,

  have you heard a peep?

  How ’bout I call my otolaryngologist

  to check for wax?

  Look up your nose for down?

  Down your throat for beaks, scaly feet?

  Here, take this just in case, the number

  of my primary ornithologist.

  Bruised Patella

  I wear my beanie into X-ray

  and the techie asks where’s the propeller!

  The boner poking out of my gingham

  does not deter him as he boosts me up

  onto the table and bends my knee

  for the lens. Then leaves,

  seems gone extra long as if he might be

  doing something he shouldn’t behind

  the little window. Or maybe he’s making

  an independent short film. Who’s to say

  as I lie dreaming of my femurs

  long and strong, each pivoting in

  its smooth acetabulum, my whole skeleton

  poised atop a snow-white bike, breeze

  drafting its sharps and flats

  through the natural keys of my ribs. Done,

  now standing in my denims, tight T,

  I tell the techie and his juniors there to gawk:

  my beanie’s for protection. I tip it

  for a peek at no textbook skull!

  Dementia

  Doc says she has the onset

  and I ask him how he knows and he says

  how she talks and carries herself.

  After hearing specifics, I say

  she’s been like that as long as I remember.

  It’s nothing new.

  When I tell him she’s a fairy godmother,

  he says, ah, that

  explains it and I ask what?

  Her cooking for ten when only the two of us

  sit down? Her passion for weed blossoms

  over exotics? Her concluding that jets

  unzip sky and dump rain?

  Tell me, Doc, where did you get your

 
degree? And what funneled you

  into this windowless exam room?

  When you look in a face, Doc,

  you don’t see wonder?

  Hers is a world where wishes are gospel.

  Hers is a world where fingers are wands

  and eyes, big picture windows.

  Building a Better Mouse

  Freda lays frays of red blouse thread

  on her forearm. They look like scratches raised up

  off her skin. She either breathes on them furtively or

  waves her hand over them dismissingly and they skitter,

  get lost on the red rug. Freda feels for them,

  circles her lined palm on the pile and returns with

  a loose ball, ganglion she calls it when held up

  to the patient white of incandescence:

  this is the start of a heart. For a body Freda recovers

  a pink jellybean clothed in the fate of a dust bunny

  under her recliner. Pinches, twists make limbs, features.

  Slight bulge in her apron pocket begets a soul.

  Somewhere in Freda’s needle is a hole.

  Unsung

  When she lets go a song,

  the words and each of their musics

  seed in her waydown,

  bud,

  bond with CO2 from her lung pairs,

  heart’s blush,

  you get the drift,

  and carry in any direction there’s an ear.

  An ear like lips with a flexi-straw between them,

  sucking up granules of malt

  like they’re gold dust at the bottom

  of a shake’s paper cup.

  Her song does not sing

  of how she gets the song

  to repeat two sets

  every night of the week except Monday,

  fifteen minutes, two menthol lites, one double scotch splashed with water

  between.

  Her song does not sing

  of her getting out of her get-up,

  leaving the building,

  crossing the tarmac at four in the morning,

  getting husband and kids up and out

  at six and seven.

  Her song does not sing

  in broad daylight

  at all.

  Says Words

  John brought home the stone

  that gets passed around at each

  friendly meeting. The smooth flat stone

  everyone gets a chance to say a few words over

  while holding it tightly between both hands,

  then letting it go and passing it on.

  John thought it might look good

  in his fish tank,

  better yet in the turtle bowl

  for the turtle to crawl

  out of the water and rest on

  in light streaming in from the window.

  John brings it back to the meeting

  where it gets set aside, where

  everyone including himself

  passes around the new rubber snake,

  says words like words

  have never been words before.

  On Bending Knee

  Repairing

  in a bed. Hooked

  to what nurses call

  appliances,

  orders to get well.

  Skin’s still gray from gases

  that granted surgeons

  passage inside.

  Plastic tubes

  pump clarity

  into her shrubbery

  of lung. Very blood

  she let abundantly in trauma

  drips back

  into her spring.

  Dreaming

  popcorns on the ceiling.

  She reaches for her husband’s hand,

  lifts it

  to her head for brushing.

  Together,

  build loose hairs into a nest.

  He daubs her face with swabs of cotton;

  she cups his chin.

  Mid-bed her mummied knee

  bends

  on a knee-bending machine.

  Against a cloak of gauze

  the foot-long slice

  is gathered like a boot.

  Beneath its swell,

  whatever lasts goes far beyond

  titanium.

  To bearing.

  Presence

  You thought you saw me on the street.

  You were right.

  You’d think I’d have some sense and stay inside.

  Let me remind you, exercise

  is part of the instructions I came with.

  The Constitution even says

  I have the right to be all I can be;

  no, wait, that’s the Army.

  It’s true,

  I am fewer molecules,

  need, say a third fewer calories, thread count.

  Contained in me is much

  negative space.

  Before long I’ll walk through walls

  without a trace of DNA,

  leaving you the door,

  this key.

  Down Main

  Immediately after the accident

  half the high school marching band

  rounds the corner. It just happened to be

  in the vicinity. Then Hose Company

  No. 6 with its groomed Dalmatian.

  Are those equestrians I see?

  I smell sweat. It’s intoxicating.

  Meanwhile victims bleed.

  They ask for air while motioning

  the parade to go around them.

  It had practiced for just such an occasion.

  Candy and ribbons tossed in the air

  stay suspended

  for the ambulance corps to arrive.

  Meteorology of Me

  Driving home I see my head, face

  in one big cumulonimbus above Route 4.

  It is traveling about fifty. Faster clouds

  are backing up behind it. Traditional thunder,

  and the cloud shuts its eyes. Cloudiness

  puffs from its nose and ears. Its mouth opens

  like it’s going to trumpet. Fortunately

  I’m wearing shades because a blinding light

  comes down and no, I am not beamed up. Instead,

  I rain. When I arrive, snow

  all over the porch. What can my family do

  but shovel me off for the night. Morning breeze,

  and I drift above the hedges where I evenly coat

  the boxwood, make a scene from a picture postcard.

  Noon approaches. I melt. Much of me

  sinks in sod. The lesser of me lifts, mere mist

  that reaches into cracks and crevices,

  soothes the hands and knees of greater bodies.

  Five

  Flying Objects

  The air is filled with them.

  It’s like the sun is a giant hive.

  Someone up there doesn’t like empty.

  Birds and planes aren’t enough.

  Clouds never did matter.

  If they did, it would rain down honey. Look,

  a man is leaving his lawn.

  He is well over the hibiscus.

  It’s the most daring thing he’s ever done.

  His wife is blowing him kisses.

  They have wings. He walks out on one.

  Stands on his head on one.

  For Ages

  Secretly at night

  when moms and dads sleep

  in their beds, storks fly

  through
the nursery windows,

  gather tears in tiny vials

  from the crybabies.

  Storks for ages

  have been taking tears back

  to the closest ocean.

  Now and then a stork’s shot down

  where the tiny vials are

  labeled contraband.

  The tears get dumped

  into a pristine lake or stream;

  its pollywogs and minnows

  perish from the salt.

  When the crybabies

  come of age, some

  pluck their eyes out. Some