A Day in the Life

Shuffling around the house
in a pair of tattered blue

slippers, wearing a bathrobe,
prescription sunglasses,

and Velcro rollers in my gray-
streaked hair, I feel like some

demented old tart, gearing up
for an afternoon of soaps.

All I need is a T.V. tray,
four or five screeching cats

and a stack of hairdo magazines
to complete this “stage set”

of life on the flip side of forty,
a tragicomedy unfolding

in my living room. I used to use
fewer props, as I recall, jumping

out of bed, sleek as an otter,
sliding down the day, squealing—

but times have changed. Now I
need at least two hours to trowel

on makeup, spray gunk in my
hair, find clothes that won’t

pinch, pick or otherwise annoy me,
pack my purse, plaster a smile

on my gravity-challenged face
and greet the morning before

it knocks on my door like one
of those perky cosmetic-

hawking neighbors, handing out
pink sample sacks of futility.

**

Smoke and Mirrors

Once, dressed in black, a cigarette dangling
from your lips, you rolled down the window

of your car and called to me, voices blaring
from your radio like backup singers. The boy

I was talking to dissolved, tablet-like,
in the watered down scenery of the things

that were not you—the sky, the ground,
buildings along the road, the books I carried.

There was only your face behind those mirrored
sunglasses, a car door opening, the seat beside you.

**

Alafair

She stood in the elevator of the Hotel Monteleone,
with its antique overhead lamp flickering
and its mercurial mechanizations, wherein it may
or may not stop at your particular floor. It was packed
with party-goers having spent hours of debauched

revelry on the streets of New Orleans, where booze
flowed in manna-like abundance and blues pounded

bodies like a butcher’s hammer, tenderizing the toughened
shell of every base emotion. Raw and inside-out,
some reached for oblivion in whatever way

presented itself, sex or drink or darker sins, as long
as it stopped the pain. Their clothes reeked of cigarettes

and secretions, their mouths agape with falsetto laughter
that pierced her ears and drove her into a corner,
clutching her pink wrap, draped lightly as a child’s

arm across her bare shoulders. Alafair wanted nothing
more than to step out of her mother’s stiletto heels
and run through the twisted alleys and cobbled

streets of the French Quarter, all the way to Point au Fer—
but it was too late now for any such escape. The elevator

stopped; people made way for her to pass, which she did,
sweeping by them like a queen. Head held high, spine
straight as a steel bar, she crossed the threshold of an ancient
lift, long accustomed to delivering young women
to rich men’s doors like freshly powdered beignets.

**

Golden Years

In a yellow housecoat with metal snaps
and a side-pocket-full of crumpled-up tissues,
she crossed the yard and checked the mailbox
like she always did in the late afternoon.

It was stuffed with the usual junk—doctor bills,
medical supply advertisements and granite
memorial brochures, as if she cared what
they said about her when she was gone. Let
her son in Topeka handle all that, assuming

he knew her name, at least. He was a sweet
boy when he was little, though, and motherhood
was good while it lasted. No use crying over spilt
milk, her daddy always said—words to live by.

She stood there a while, watching cars blow
past and the frantic migration of squirrels
from one side of the road to the other. Just
like people, they wanted to be where they
weren’t, even if it killed them. Thank

God she was content with what she had
and where she had it, and for His bountiful
mercy in giving her this old lady suit so she
could do what she damn well pleased.