Male Call
In Biloxi
he stands in line
for the picture machine.
Refined in a uniform
he smiles for her.
Hoping to arrive
somewhere in Axton
pasted in black and white.
She smiles at
his picture,
its introduction.
**
She tells me to wait
and I always do what I’m told
so I sit back clutching my doll,
listen to her 64 Impala hum and keep beat.
She has the heat on wide open
since it’s December
and I get cold.
My brother is in the front seat
leaning back to help me tie
Rainbow Brite’s shoes.
I can’t stop applying
my Chapstick. I see my mother
in the doorway of our house
yelling as the Christmas dishes fly
past her onto the porch. She is a shadow
to me, a figure
in the family album. My
brother pulls the cigarette
lighter from the dash,
its fiery rings shine like lava.
**
Mimosa Tree
We are somewhere in August.
You are dangling from the Mimosa,
your hair dressed
in a hundred little pink puffs.
I am slinging the blade
up and over my shoulder.
The sky is nearly emerald
with storm. I can hear the hot bugs.
The trees are thick with webs of cotton. You are
still there in the branches, laughing among the pink poms.
**
Figure Eight in 1984
Frozen roots, dig into
figure-eights
around the weeping willow
leaves drooping,
it’s bark nearly dead. I planted
daffodils in the pebble-scattered path.
Blankets of willow leaves
shag like wigs
draped over tire tracks,
spines of dirt, that scattered
and collected you.
