Saturday After Thanksgiving

On the edge of the couch
she sat, with her head in her hand
long enough
for the traffic to recede
and then pour back onto the asphalt
for the ashtray to overflow
she watched
the smoke as it poured off the tip of her cigarette
folding down
arching up, twisting away
she heard the people out side
speaking to one another
the birds calling out warnings
the tires on the wet road
she registered the light
slowly traveling across the room
passing over glass and metal, hard wood and linoleum
until its' warmth was finally upon her
she sat, with her head in her hand
on the edge of the couch
she sat, with her head in her hand
until its' warmth was finally upon her
passing over glass and metal, hard wood and linoleum
slowly traveling across the room
she registered the light
the tires on the wet road
the birds calling out warnings
speaking to one another
she heard the people out side
arching up, twisting away
folding down
the smoke as it poured off the tip of her cigarette
she watched
for the ashtray to overflow
and then pour back onto the asphalt
for the traffic to recede
long enough
she sat, with her head in her hand
on the edge of the couch.



- Colleen C. Fitzgerald 2001

men called jack

--for Jack Micheline
poet on the front lines
The eye is connected to
the heart"--Micheline

across San Francisco/America
single room occupancy lives refusing
to learn "the lord is my shepherd"/unable
escapees from the Bronx
without teeth failing eyesight
earth crusted nails
soap can't remove
proud of it
dangerous men breathing poems....
isn't just words/eyes talk
way you move your hand
turn your head
gives a poet away...
men called Jack
nurturing more
than flesh and bone
flesh and bone of
what matters
child-eyes pushing 70 years
scrawled on brown bags/forgotten
yellowing pages stuffed
boxes scaling
peeling walls to some heaven

outlaws/madmen fighting
what straightjackets imagination
refusing to be herded
to green pastures
return its soul to America
and damned for it
men called Jack/colorists
painting red and
purple and green
murals on dullness
scaring the shit
out of
"lord is my shepherd"
America




SHE'S BACK

She's tasting a boy's first
wet appetite, like the girl
she once was

strutting on
a tenement firescape
in the protection of marital wars;

On a rock blast of Elvis
swings into a blacklisted country.

Busy with bread-in-the mouth arithmetic
parents, depression era refugees
they saw only poverty.

A man old enough to
be that girl's father
now holds my hand past
the pretense of skin

kisses a woman's mind out of lips
in a Greenwich Village bar
smack into another boro / home,
and she,
drum pulse in every cell, she's
giving him a girls new body.

As though a heavy booted wish
stomped out years...pact
against her womanhood.
She made against her mother's slavery.

Before she knew
the price of that murder.



BECAUSE YOU CAN'T I WILL

write the poem about all the nannies
in this Brooklyn neighborhood we
lived in mine not yours
the hood missing Bronx edge
you grew up in
raised three kids
made-it -relief after each
wiping plenty of ass sometimes
punching fists thru walls
to get thru ...
Vietnam marriage jobs...
cleaned up your own shit

no wonder you were so struck
by these nannies walked
uneasily thru this safe zone
looking over your shoulder
quick draw eyes on the ready/
feared losing that edge
becoming too sure...

this is the poem you walked away from
the woman who wanted you to stop smoking
drawn to your pall mall breath
to give up: the
spirit that flew you to her
and took you away:

this is the world you couldn't afford.


- Linda Lerner 2001