ErnieWormwood

Zita

for the children

She came to my office for a meeting

on how to prevent domestic violence

& told me how her husband

had kidnapped her two little boys

& how she found them. He was abusive,

she was divorcing him, but she was

having a bad time of it in Court.

That was a Monday afternoon.

Zita was a scientist. On Wednesday

morning, I picked up The Washington

Post & there was Zita on the front page.

On Tuesday, her husband shot her in the

parking lot of her office as she returned

from lunch.

A perfectly nice woman dead.

A husband and father arrested.

Two little boys left with no mother

or father to buy their favorite cereals

or read them “Goodnight Moon” at bedtime.

She was sitting in my office

pink Norwegian flesh

pixie blonde hair

eyes of the sea

She was drinking hot tea with lemon

She was showing off photographs of her two little boys

She was using my Kleenex to blot her tears

She was breathing the same air I breathed

She was wishing for other women & then,

She was hugging me goodbye, Ernie,

forever.

Sex, Death & Poetry

For three years after my father died,

I wrote poems about death

his death, my death, yours

the fact that we are all going to die

the fact that we are all dying

all the time—we are born dying--

that death was everywhere

behind the picket fence

in front of the wisteria

in the piano & the mailbox

even under the pillow

& in the refrigerator

right next to the cranberry juice.

I thought about Angelina Weld Grimke,

born in 1880, died in 1958,

the only child of an emancipated slave,

who graduated from Harvard Law School,

& a wealthy white woman

who left when Angelina was very young.

Angelina taught at Dunbar High School

in Washington, D.C.

She wrote poems, plays & short stories.

She stopped writing after her father died in 1930.

She lived every day & night for 28 years

& didn’t write another poem, or play, or short story.

So I wrote for Angelina & her father

& for me & for my father,

for all of us,

the dying & the dead.

Then in the fourth year,

I began writing about sex,

often while I was naked—

sex at Squaw Valley, sex at Anam Cara,

sex at Dodge, sex at Coolfont

all poetry venues, all brain sex

not having sex, just writing about it;

then sex at third base at Camden Yards,

under the waterfall at Falling Water,

in the confessional box--sin, sinner, sinnest--

behind the seafood counter,

under the dais while Orrin Hatch

(not with Orrin Hatch) gives a keynote.

Then the usual: airplanes, trains, buses,

the teeter totter, the swing,

the fourth Capitol step,

the 17th hole at Pebble Beach,

the McDonald’s on the corner,

the elevator of your building,

in the house of your mother

& of my father

& finally in my own bed

& I wondered what would come next,

& who

& why

& if it would be before we died,

you & I.

Since You

I don’t sleep the same

your lovebuzz gone from my ear,

your mysterious hand missing from my breast,

no legbeat crossing over my leg’s world.

or chestcurls kissing my nipples.

No spoon against my spoon.

The night’s learned tenderness

annulled by the you there, me hereness of us.

Sleep is my lover now,

unwelcomed, he puzzles not knowing the one

who won’t submit, I, who cannot sleep quite me again

since you.

Africa

on learning that diamonds are not rare, but controlled

Out for a walk

for the dog’s morning toilette

a penetration of frost, Zhivago-like

on leaves, grass, blacktop, mailbox, flagpole.

Frost shaming the diamond from Africa

on my ring finger

free, disappearing, God’s

frost better than the diamonds

on the arm of a huckster in a wheelchair

let’s say on a corner in New York

his black arm dazzling to the elbow

with gems & timetellers

his I ♥NY shirt blazing

he & the sun in cahoots

blinding me. I can’t look away.

The dog pushes north on his red leash,

pees on the jewels at the crease of

the guy’s elbow, creating a fissure

a yellowing, a train wreck of pee.

The shock of it

what compelled him

what mix of being and power

how he knew to pee exactly there

why I still wear a diamond ring

why nothing is forever

except that knowledge

how the frost knew to come

today to this place & why

the huckster didn’t move--

what held him, his arm, his shirt

the people of Africa

on their knees scooping up diamonds--

the brilliance, the tragedy of it all.

The Wife’s Lament

Diamond ring

Wedding ring

Suffering

Orphan At 52

The way one looks

to the North Star

to the compass

or the sextant

or a map.

The way I stare at the bottle

of your favorite whiskey

I bought this morning

when I already have

two others just like it.

Lost.

Looking for direction.

Trying to get my

father-daughter bearings.

Trying to feel like myself.

You,

still wanting me

to play some Pavarotti

and fix you

a VO and water.

Not yet dead a week.

“If You Can See Your Own Hands in a Dream
You Will Know You Are Dreaming”

Carlos Castaneda

I cannot tell where I am in the dream,

Some kind of waiting room or lobby.

A man wearing gloves takes out a gun.

He shoots three people. I cannot see them,

& then he aims the gun at me, but it is okay.

I know he can’t really see me because

I am the dreamer.

I can see my hands.

I close my eyes and

See my hands before me

Like a murder.

I was a writer of poems.

I never lied.

I cried.

I died

Armed with my fountain pen.

I could see it in my hands.