Author: redrivergirl

Before
v.

kiss the children.
gather light and laughter.
before sunset.

Before
iv.

I had already
gone for a dip and
taken a sip and skated a bit and
sunk below bottom and
come up for air and
searched and believed and
forgotten to breathe and been
washed out by tides in the sea
of your eyes
before
you thought

to blink.

Before
iii.

To The Grumpy Man In The Underground Parking Lot:

Don’t worry. We will squeeze the
bitter out of you and use it
to make Grandma’s German chocolate cake.

Your not-to-be-bothered glare will taste
simply delicious
with milk.

Your humpf to our greeting is
dark chocolate chips–the extra twice
chocolate-in-chocolate.

Your frown will be frosting, grown firm
at the edges.
Waiting to be bitten.

In the days before we learn
what you have learned,
you will be our favorite after-school treat.

Even the dog will beg
to lick the plate.

Before
ii.

Before the
freeze and the
warming and the sailing and
exploring and marching
and the camps and the
conquering and
the burning and the
fighting and the claiming and
the rounding up and the
taking and wasting
and misplacing and the
assassination, indoctrination,
annihilation and
the bombing and the
theories and the stripping and
pumping and spilling and
polluting and the dust and the
the floods and the fires
and the earthquakes and waves
and the leaks and reforms
and repeals and
the ratings and the
commentary and the slogans and
the cute messages and the
the panels and the
shouting and aligning and
misguiding and the
keeping apart and not telling
and the left out and
the far right and the sickness
in our middles and the
turning away and the
pointing and the landmines
and all the others and the
not me and
the falling out of the sky and the
shooting,



We used to
take care of each other.

Before
i.

blue space.
dreams escape.
before dawn.

New
v.

autograph, hasty.
bathroom clock stopped.
last cigarette in a bag
for the cop.
not enough time
for sensible shoes.
dinner and dancing,
new-car-scent
new.

New
iv.

The orange peeler.
Is not working any better than
when your father explained how to use it 37 years ago.
It had maybe just been invented. Maybe he picked it up
at Hardware Hank along with a new 8-piece socket set plus
a brown paper bag of peanuts in the shell.
It would have been just before Christmas.
Of course it worked for your father. He is probably using one
right now. Sitting down to a breakfast of oatmeal.
Black coffee. While you are making a royal mess
of your hands, mouse, desk, sticky scrap
of napkin…

It was not the best stocking stuffer. Unless you’re counting
the ones you still remember.

New
iii.

To The Girl In The Rear-View Mirror Twisting Her Hair While Watching A Train In Line At The Drive-Thru Five Days After New Year’s Eve:

In the event your resolutions
had anything
to do with dropping a huge bag of money
for the people next in line…

Now would be a very good time.