The Final Push

We are working like crazy this week
so we can move into our house on Sunday.
Some pictures are about all I have time for!

Before laying the floor...




















During the laying of the floor...

























Hopefully there will soon be an after shot!

Poetry Thursday: Finding Donnisha

I da know, Donnisha replies
to my every question.

We're in the car--
I'm her teacher
trying to understand this hard
skinny girl
with the spiky guards
around her green bud heart.

I stack questions on the dashboard.
I da know, I da know, I da know
and I want to reach
across the chasm of our lives
our worlds
our continents apart
in the same small city.
I want to tell her to blaze
out like a sunflower
in a weedy garden
on this hot summer day.

In the parking lot,
she grabs my hand.
I soften to blue

believing we can all step small
believing we can all
lean into the light.

City Girl in the Suburbs

gets her wallet stolen

at yoga.

Yes, I left my bag
in the dressing room.
Yes, I should know better.

I live fanatically by such rules as:
Always lock.
Leave nothing on car seats.
Leave nothing in the car at all
unless you can part with it.

I just thought it was okay.
It was YOGA.
In the suburbs.
C'mon.
Who is going to slip into your bag
like light through a crack
while you lay breathing on the floor
to carry off a wallet
stuffed with receipts and
teacher discount cards?

This is my profiling
of suburban yogis
counting this geography
of the world
as safe.

But we are all of this world.

Tomorrow
I'll put down my paint brush
to do penance
at the hands
of bureacracy
and count my losses
in the nearly finished sandwich punches
the Starbucks gift card
and wait patiently
for the shiny new credit cards
to slide through
the slot in my door.

Sticks and Stones

after a long day of
coating doors with
polyurethane
i'm driving down
Pitcher Street--
a sad old street
of empty houses
midway between
the new house and
current apartment

right at the corner
by shake 'n bake
(the roller rink)
i'm waiting at a stop sign
enjoying the cool air
the sun fading orange
when--

KUH-RACK

a rock hits
my rear triangle window
(the expensive one)

what! i say to myself
my teacher have you lost your mind?!?!?
voice revving up

checking the rearview mirror
i see a cluster of boys
between 9 and 12
in a small pack
so i move into reverse
while forming
a small sermon on
why not to throw
rocks at car windows

they all take off
running into the alley
while my window--
a spiderweb of cracked glass
creaks like too cold icicles

i guess i could have parked
confronted them on foot
just to look them in the eye
and say that was wrong

but this is just another day
just another car rolling by
the blue police light
blinking a staccato warning above
the block deserted
except for an aimless band of kids

what is it that makes a person?
is it the long reach at the
too high clouds
to stuff your mouth full of
cotton-candy dreams?
or is it that you are where you are
windows boarded
torn screens
houses who gasped a last
breath years ago

for a realist
this is life

what's another broken window?

Poetry Thursday: Girl Sleuth

I loved the topic of today's Poetry Thursday, unfinshed conversations. I had lots of ideas but ended up revising an old poem about a conversation I wanted to finish.

Girl Sleuth

Sometimes I'm Nancy Drew--
prowling through your closet
rummaging in your drawers
touching objects like Braille
to uncover you.

I feel along your forehead and gently
tap your skull, searching for the secret
panel which will spring open
on a creaky hinge
and solve your mystery.

I'm not looking for Ned Nickerson's blank
intimacy of the clues you toss out--
sealed envelopes to be steamed open
fractured fingerprints scattered across
the kitchen counter
but a key--
which will open your doors
and take me up the hidden 99 stairs.

This life does not
find endings
in final chapters
but stretches across
a thousand days
like a circle of months
twirling into the
dark night.

Having a Toilet

you take it for granted
but after monitoring water
planning lunch breaks
around the rest room
walking up the street
to school to use
the lavatory
this is the moment



















We named August 26
THE DAY
to move
and so
I paint and sand
through the npr
line-up
with one eye
anchored
on the future.

The living room and kitchen in progress...

Home Depot Doesn't Care

...a man wrote
in thick black marker
on peach copy paper
in the flooring department
of the Lansdowne Home Depot
and tacked it to the 20% off
window treatments sign

then he scrawled,
"There is no one here
to help you!"
and left it laying on the empty desk
in protest

We did wait 45 minutes for
someone to help us cut
the threshold for our bathroom
which when completed
had ridges and valleys
due to a dull blade
and we could not take it with us.

We did ask the three guys
standing around
in the appliance department
for help
and they said that
isn't our area, you gottta
go to the flooring person

We did ask the flooring person
who was pinballing from
customer to customer
and then disappearing.

We did watch the lady
buying carpet, who had waited
even longer than us,
ask for a manager
and there was no manager
but someone eventually came
to cut two feet
off a roll.

No one moved the signs.

Perhaps we should have joined in
grabbing markers and pamphlets
and speaking our minds
a flurry of words
littering the vacant desk
screaming out
into the flourescent din--

not to go unnoticed.