Lounging With Two Cats

To her right, the wind blows a curtain of swirls—

one flowing curve toward rounded waist,

the other swaddling her pursuing bust

on a porch. One foot dressed in a green shoe,

one foot crossed, naked as gazebo wood.

The buttoned blue, the garbled silk, a red shawl,

a knitted cross above a black and a white cat,

here, then gone. Muslin as a frame of green,

those eyes of hers—green apples fallen

from the tree by the walk. Be careful— 

some apples there, she says. I filled a cart 

with them already once today, again to me,

a passerby, with lots to see in a day. I imagine

my foot will slip against the fruit to trip me,

with her up there on the porch, as high

as Apple Hill. She raises both her hands

up to the sky. Eyes trick and dazzle, powder

on her nose, the curves along her red lips,

so open, ready, and defined, proclaiming

purrs to scratch the tweed.

Right in the Eye

There’s often a place in the Stooges—

and you’ve seen it a few times—where the food

fight begins, and you get the picture—icing

over the hostess’s dress, a flat-on pie in the face

that hangs all over your chin—and at first

you hold back—then a small grin enters your teeth

—and whether you care to or not the winter’s night

is a TV room of tittering so hard it makes you

want to tinkle. And why is it, precisely, why

does laughter want to live here?—and then as you

return and sit down again you go all in and—

say it—laugh—ureal, hardy and scarlet, lusty

and tea-cupped, feisty and full of the simple fact

that it’s you, only you, fully unknown you,

as you rarely are. Like the time you physically

walked around two delicious faces, getting a better

look—it wasn’t a party, a dinner, or a diner,

but a gallery with two ladies’ faces, who would

otherwise be alone, but there they were covered

in desserts. Right in the eye. And why does laughter

want to live here? Well, you held it together

in hushed pretense of the muse, but those faces:

alive, with eyes licking tongue licking sugared

frosting, two macaroons to see you, my dear,

a lopsided banana split as lickety split

as a tossed nightmare on saccharine, bedazzled

jewels of candy dots for your necklace,

and all the whipped-cream satin, scoops

of chocolate and vanilla over your decolletage,

profiteroles with syrup lounging in the corners

of your cheeks (we won’t say exactly where),

and a topping of banana and maraschino cherries

unbalancing themselves across your combs

and skullcap. Nobody told me why laughter

lives in bedeviled moments of that rare you.

After the Exhibit 

After attending a sculpture exhibit,

I go to the grocery store and see a man

wandering the aisles who looks like one

of the artworks. He has dark eyes,

a mustache, braided black hair,

and a look of stranger-danger.

I want to go up to him and tell him

about the work by an artist who takes

photographs of men in her family, transfers

them onto fabric, sews the sections, dresses

the bust in body hair, and ties the back of it all

with dark fibers—the whole sculpture

placed over a wire frame that looks

amazingly like a human being,

its eyes moving as you do, all re-created

by the hand of Frankenstein’s seamstress God.

But then I think twice about talking

to him—as I’m an oddity myself,

with the look of stranger-danger. And his girlfriend

might object. But now, like you, I’m wondering

whether imitations of us through art, demented

or otherwise, cause in us a desire to connect,

purse the strings, bind together, sew in place

something new, redesign imagined friendships

into real ones, if only for a moment. Perhaps an artist’s

craft generates for us a new frame for draping

our commonalities on display throughout the aisles.

And then we comment on the packaged results

assembled here—like all these plastic packets

of imported shredded cheese.