Skype Poetry 3

What time did you wake up?
What did you dream about?
That's how they are sometimes.
Too real?
Oh oh
Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm not in a dream.
Oh oh
Not good at all.
I heard a kid's voice.
Not yet
Boooo
Non-bagels--twilight of non-bagels
Anne of green bagels
Noooo!

The Club

I notice you--no,
not you, especially--
but the fat wad of crisp new twenties
that you thrust absently
into the front pocket of your already-bulging
khaki cargo shorts.

I watch you turn guiltily
from the ATM, making your self-conscious
sojourn towards a clandestine corner,
changing chairs
until your view is unobstructed.

It's Thursday--payday, right?

My second song ends--heavy metal
crap, the DJ's idea of audio foreplay--
and I scoop up the crumpled
two-dollar bills--only four, Christ--
scattered randomly across the sleek stage
like castoff Kleenex.

I strut straight to your bottle-littered
table, six-inch Lucite heels clattering
against the mock marble.
I lean in close, give you a face full of silicone
and cheap perfume,
my apathy apparent to all
but you.

A proposition, a whispered promise;
I lead you by your clammy hand,
feeling the hard metal on your finger,
to a place shadowy, secluded.
An eternity later, you leave,
your load doubly lightened.

Does she know?
Know that your kids don't eat
so that mine can?

Skype Poetry 2

chestnut
sweet chestnut
that's yellow
chestnut
it's sweet

Skype Poetry

I wanna play scrabble
cuz you teach me how to spell
how to spell magic
m-a-g-i-k
yup!
majik
maji maji the fish
we couldn't find it yesterday in the market
they were all out
yes
apparently koreans are eating them a lot
not nice
yes
absolutely
not cool
we might start a war again
sea squirt war
like opium war
all wars are lame
only the sea squirt ones
are worth fighting for
lots of squirting
yes
and I dunno how to eat trout

Tree Frogs

Conclusion


The unusually warm temperatures that had persuaded her to leave the house without a jacket that morning had turned brisk, and she shivered as she passed through shady patches, the thick, leafy branches of elms and birches momentarily blotting out the waning sun. She could hear Abel's labored breathing, and when she surreptitiously stole a glance behind her, she saw that his face was crimson and slick with sweat. How can he be hot? she wondered, uneasily. I'm freezing.

As they neared a fork in the path, Abel cleared his throat and said nervously, "This is where De-they found her." He indicated a stand of trees slightly ahead and to the right. No name was necessary; she knew who he meant.

In the sylvan stillness, images long-forgotten flickered like old home movies across her mind's eye: warm September afternoon; giggling girls, in twos and threes, walking home from school; the junior high boys catching fly balls in the outfield; Bobbie Mercer's flaxen hair and bright vermillion sweater, so vivid in contrast to the verdant woods; Devin Lynch, smiling at her, hat tipped to one side, tapping the ground with a baseball bat--

"I told her that little girls shouldn't walk in the woods alone," Abel said, jerking Lisa from her reverie, "but she just laughed." He sounded almost...sad?

"He laughed, too."

She held her breath. He?

He laughed and told me, 'Leave her alone, Abel, she can walk here if she wants', then he told me I'd better go--'go fucking home, Abel'--or else he'd say I did it, that he saw me with her, and everyone would believe him."

Abel's distress was palpable; his words scared her, although she could not comprehend them. She quickened her pace, knowing that they were nearly at the edge of the woods, and she would soon be home. Mom had promised them pizza for dinner, and she was not going to miss that, even if she had to share with her stupid cousins.

The trees had begun to thin, and the chirping of the tree frogs had quieted. She could see the ball field in the distance. Behind her, Abel had grown strangely silent, and as they approached the end of the path, she heard his words echoed, although it was not he who spoke them.

"Go home, Abel." Devin smiled.

Tree Frogs

Part 4


"What's your name?" he asked.

"Lisa," she replied, hesitantly.

"I think I saw your cousins go that way earlier, Lisa," he said, pointing his stick toward a section of woods to the left. There was no discernable path leading there, and the bushes were thick, virtually impenetrable. She wondered how Daryl and Rayna had managed to get through.

That morning, her cousins, newly arrived for the summer, had wanted to explore, and were particularly drawn to the schoolyard and its adjacent mysterious woods, despite Lisa's protestations. She was expressly forbidden to venture into the woods, ever since it happened, and she knew what her mom would say: Don't you let me catch you out there! Dope fiends and crazy people hang out there, and you know what happened to that girl. Lisa repeated her mother's edict to her cousins, who had laughed, called her a baby, and made their way across the schoolyard and toward the ball field beyond, casting twin shadows as the sun rose higher in the morning sky.

It was now late afternoon, and the warmth of the dappled sunlight had given way to cool shadows. The silence was broken only by the soft rustling of the trees and the deafening beat of her heart. She knew her cousins had not gone into the deeper woods; they were from Boston--city kids--and unlikely to have ventured too far off any beaten path. She also began to doubt their "tree frog" story; she was pretty sure they wouldn't know a tree frog if they got hit in the head with one. They were always telling her fibs, excluding her from their games, strictly adhering to a "three's a crowd" policy. They were probably back at her house already, having a snack and watching Star Blazers.

"That's a pretty shirt," said Abel, meeting her gaze for he first time.

"Thanks," she said, shyly.

"What size clothes do you wear?"

The question, so unexpected, caught her off guard. "Um, I'm not sure," she lied. She practically memorized the Sears catalog every year when it came time to shop for school clothes, helpfully folding over the page corners for her mom's easy reference. She was well aware of what size she wore.

"Turn around," he said, "and I'll look at the tag."

Suddenly panicked, she responded, "I think I'm a 6X." At eight years old, she was small for her age. She hoped he would drop the subject.

"Please," she pleaded, near tears, "I need to go home now."

"Ok," he conceded, to her surprise. He waited for her to take the lead, reversing direction, and followed close behind, stick in hand.

Tree Frogs

Part Three

Abel Lynch, twenty-one, was the eldest of three. By all accounts, the entire family--with the exception of the middle brother, Devin--was genetically-challenged, from their regretfully bad looks to their unfortunate dearth of intellect. Abel and his sister Eva, who, although several years younger, was nearly identical to Abel in appearance and manner, were victimized almost daily, on the receiving end of the verbal, often physical, cruelties reserved for those who don't fit in, and at which kids are particularly adept. That Devin, attractive and charming, had escaped the shallow end of the Lynch gene pool was a running joke in town, and there was a marked degree of irony in the fact that Devin's "normalness" made his siblings' tormentors all the more vicious.

Abel often wandered down the buckled concrete sidewalks of town, collecting bottles and aluminum cans, stuffing them into the large, beat-up Hefty bag he always carried. He rarely looked up, even when neighborhood kids hurled insults (or rocks), and while Lisa never actively participated in taunting him, she saw no harm in giggling with her friends behind his back. No one laughed at Devin, though. No one even teased him about his "weirdo" brother and "ugly-ass" sister, usually fair game in the world of teenage boys. But it was a small town; he must have been aware of his siblings' notoriety, though it never showed.

When Bobbie Mercer was found, suspicion fell squarely on Abel Lynch; it was common knowledge that he frequented the woods near the school. What he did there was anyone's guess; speculation ranged from devil worship to sexual deviations, the descriptions of which were unfathomable to Lisa's then five-year-old brain. It was Devin who had found Bobbie that day, catching a glimpse of blonde hair and red sweater as he cut through the woods, late for baseball practice; Devin who had run, breathless, to the police; Devin who had seen his brother go into the woods the afternoon Bobbie disappeared...

Tree Frogs

Part Two

The woods began at the far edge of the school's baseball field, and were as familiar to her as her own back yard. In a small town, few areas go unexplored by kids; these woods played host to countless games of hide and seek, capture the flag, and Land of the Lost. Clandestine adult activities took place there, too, as evidenced by the crushed Coors cans, cigarette butts, and used rubbers strewn about, as if deposited there by a white trash tsunami. She didn't exactly know what rubbers were, but she knew they were something...dirty, and she felt strangely guilty. oddly titillated, upon seeing them.

Approaching a small, well-worn clearing, littered with the aforementioned detritus, her eyes shifted sideways, stealing a glance.

"Do you come out here a lot?" he said, his voice cutting the silence, and she wrenched her eyes forward, face reddening, as surely he must have noticed where her gaze had fallen.

"Sometimes," she said in a voice that sounded alien to her, somehow not her own, yet familiar, distant.

"I sleep out here sometimes, when I can't go home," he said cryptically. "He chases me away, though, so sometimes I don't sleep at all."

Who was "he"? she wondered, momentarily forgetting she was afraid. A policeman? She brightened a little at this thought, imagining the crisp blue uniform and shining tin badge of the jovial, ruddy-faced officer who would appear around the next bend in the path, ordering Abel to move along now, and escorting her out of the woods, all the while lecturing her on the perils that await little girls who wander off alone: don't want to end up like that young Mercer gal, now, do ya? he would ask. Bobbie Mercer, a year ahead of Lisa in school, had disappeared one early fall afternoon, two--no, three years ago last September. They found her broken, flyblown body two days later, hidden in a dense thicket of trees. The town remained fear-stricken for months, and although rumors and speculation abounded in those first harrowing weeks, no killer was ever caught.

"It's not safe to come out here alone, though," he warned, as if reading her mind. "I found a dead cat out here once. It was covered in flies and all smashed, like someone hit it with a bat."

Or a big stick, she thought, with a shudder.