Ron's Poems |
Stop-Time
Frank McCabe bought on credit at my father’s liquor store, they had gone to school together. Finally my father said, teach my son to play drums and we’re even, for now. Late afternoon lessons in his cellar, first the basics rapped out on rubber pads, then rolls, drags, flams, paradiddles and ratamacues. Moving on to…
Ron's Poems |
It Was A 3.8
It Was A 3.8 My mother said go get me a plum. When I got to the fridge, she said and some almonds. In the cabinet, the air-tight calm of a canned baby ham. My grandmother lost a forefinger while slicing onions! No you silly, she got an infection. The headache unsteadied her hand, the…
Ron's Poems |
Blizzard
The snowdrift is a monument to the storm passed to sea. Sunlight piercing at noon – I avert my eyes from the illumination. Twenty years ago, just a few miles from here, my car was stranded in snow. I’d penciled some words on the back of a shopping list, I could actually die out here.…
Ron's Poems |
Questionnaire to the Dead
QUESTIONNAIRE TO THE DEAD regarding repatriation by the Conciliation Commission 1 Do you prefer to return to what is now our world, whether or not you could inhabit your former home? 2 If you prefer not to return, indicate in order of preference other worlds where you would like to live. 3 If your preference…
Ron's Poems |
Cocoanut Grove
My life began with the fire, glimmering in the birthwaters. Beyond my bedroom wall voices murmured a memory. My father’s mother died with her sister in the ladies’ room. He said -- If she had escaped to Shawmut Street, been saved, nothing would be the way it is. How is it? drifted over my route…
Ron's Poems |
The Great Wave
I predict, like the one who was sucked to sea and returned in an Arabian container ship, all small worlds will be dashed and drowned. I witnessed this deliverance on a silent television, my fingers disquieted a bowl of almonds, a librarian called to say Constantinople is on hold. The entire surface trembled, an oscillation…
Ron's Poems |
Four Roses
So quiet and undeveloped, the sadness in the father, like wet porcelain clay in a closet, organic and inert. He drives to work in the Dodge with the back seat removed to transport cases of liquor and wine between his two stores, and the day will be profitable, the shelves depleted here and there, then…
Ron's Poems |
“Reunion”
Ron's Poems |
Under the Pergola
Under the Pergola An Adirondack chair, painted in a primary color, in one corner, under the pergola, the blooming vine appealing above – people an abundance of themselves, prodigal in sunglasses, in the shade. Will I speak to him, and if so, do I call him “Mr. Secretary”? He groans into his chair, opens the…