Poems
from Love Lessons: Poems 1973–2023
Dancing Class | Sensuality | Coming Home | Friendship | Asylum
Dancing Class
We danced in the school basement.
Strauss waltzes mingled with the smells of chocolate milk
and stale peanut butter sandwiches,
bits of Wonder Bread like paste wax smeared across the floor.
We ducked bare bulbs that swung too low,
making awkward shadows on the posts.
Steam in the pipes beat its own dance tunes.
I dreaded Tuesday afternoons.
“Boys, choose partners.”
Red-faced and nervous, they eyed us from across the room
then jostled for the few girls wearing bras.
The rest of us lined the wall and waited to be touched.
Or paired by size.
Five-eleven in my socks and flat-chested, I was never chosen.
I danced with our teacher or Bert,
as fat as I was tall, who later did time in Rahway
for running down an old lady
In his ‘48 Dodge convertible.
Elaine was always picked.
She wore 34B in the sixth grade, was fast, Jewish, and my best friend.
For her, I stepped on cracks and once, on a dare, farted in class.
Her father, a widower, hired housekeepers with carrot hair who told us dirty stories.
One sang to herself,
“Don’t ever let ‘em get you in bed until you’ve been to town.”
Elaine once told me, scared, “Boys only fuck you when you bleed.”
(Or was it the other way around?)
I ran home from school one day in tears, ashamed, screaming,
“Shit, you shit, you bitch” across the street.
Elaine had led a chorus chant that afternoon,
“Mary Ella has no fella tiny tits and giant feet.”
“Boys, take the lead. One and two and dip and…
No she dips, Bert, not you.”
The needles of their laughter stuck and warped our moves.
Chosen or not chosen, we measured time by twos.
Sensuality
Contrary to all my liberated fantasies,
when making love to you
I long to be swept off my feet
and spun like cotton candy in your mouth,
sweet fluff that melts to crystal,
smearing the shadows of your sly grin.
Instead, stiff with fear,
I’m a cardboard cone stripped of sweets,
a scared kid on the Palisades Tilt-a-Whirl.
Leaving, I tense a smile, hug you,
then trudge off into the cold night,
scraping powdered snow like icing from my windshield
with bare hands.
Coming Home
The bus tunnels into the darkening night.
Distant sparks of light
glint off the black walls closing in around us,
protecting stiff winter dusk like the studs of my worn leather belt.
I’m reading Adrienne Rich and getting depressed.
I can’t argue with her tormented vision,
bruised violence, bitter nostalgia that tracks her common language dreams.
But her wild patience aches.
Where’s the peace?
She re-members. I am driven to forget,
to reach my hand through broken frames of glass
as though the last brass ring
were creaking on a rusty arm.
I grab the blur of spinning neon gold
and studs of light explode like the
wedding bands I’ve buried in my sleep.
Friendship
Come with me and
you’ll sing like a raucous crow,
hit notes you never knew you had.
Tired?
I’ll tuck you into crisp white sheets
that smell like grass in warm spring yards.
I’ll draw the shades and
play you an afternoon tune on my harmonica.
Awake?
I’ll slip you strawberries
steeped with currants in May wine
then send you home,
packing my songs to go.
You conduct yourself with dignity,
but I expect you’ll come another time,
your own maestro,
then pluck more harmony with me.
Chords that fine
need stops to savor time.
Asylum
The Maya of the Yucatan invented writing, calendars, and a number system
that counted in the millions. Made tools and pottery, sang songs,
built ball courts, pyramids and temples, created public plazas
with monumental columns that told their history. 3rd century AD.
The Aztec in the Valley of Mexico built warrior statues to guard their temples.
They too made calendars: one, like ours, the other sacred, with symbols
marking sounds or words. They left books with rich depictions of their daily lives,
their legends, their beliefs. 13th and 14th centuries.
The Inca in Peru built an empire, 16 million people. In 1400s AD.
They used knots and cords for numbers, intricate skill recording myths and history.
These khipus, “language of animals,” strung textured cords
commanding 95 “syllables” of color, touch, and direction.
Let that sink in:
Touch as well as sight. Makers, readers had to know the different feel of vicuna, alpaca,
others that lent their coats to different cords of meaning.
Syllabic systems like our own, marks that set our speech, count symbols in a similar range.
But the Inca used touch. Touch! 95 locks of color, touch, and direction.
I wake up thinking about this.
These are ancestors, Americans, people of Central and South America
whose descendants seek asylum at our borders. Instead of safety, we aim teargas,
separate children from parents, call them “alien,” “criminal,” these noble people
who had their histories stolen, seeking refuge from their countries’ wars our people started.
Some seekers, blood mixed for centuries with their conquerors,
are likely people of the touch, who used intricate knots and textured cords
to share their daily lives and myths, people who understood
the language of animals. I ache to welcome them.
Three dimensions, starting at our fingertips.
I touch your cheek, imagining a different world.