Indecision
Under the glass canopy
Robert Frost's horse noses
his breakfast of turnips.
In the solarium, Madame
lights a cork-tipped cigarette,
sends her tiara out for cleaning.
We are hostages,
kindling to a rapacious need,
muzzle to rib, largo and thrilling.
The minister's son prefers vanilla ice cream
to lamb chops, carries his prayers
in a leather satchel.
The forecast is for the hunter's moon,
a saline breeze. A measly grapefruit sun
disappearing early.
We are misplaced, unfound, deciding
whether or not to cry, whether or not
to pull the white sheet up over our heads.
What really happened to Natalie Wood?
The body pulled from the water, dripping, brimful
They didn't find, no, not one, even the sheriff could not
Her friends said her purse, she would never
Her agent, a contract, unsigned but everyone knew
The tennis pro, the day before, a motorcycle accident, at least
The newspapers all said but you believe what you
Under the cut-glass ashtray beside the bed
Her one-eyed cat they said cried all that night
He'd just had that boat painted, it was a shame
She could have been, you know such talent
The pills, maybe, too much wine, they said he
I guess we'll never really
Coburg Girls
for M
Where do they spring from, tomato,
incandescent? Here in this, my hometown,
my hayloft, girls and more girls, see here's one now,
15, her long legs pumping a creaky swing
in this windblown park behind antiques row
in Coburg, flaming hair, new breasts high,
(nothing like the dusky sorrowing penitents
of the French countryside
who torture with their eyelids),
these daisy girls all health and rude energy,
these American girls.
Here, suddenly,
I am writing in a mirror these are your lines,
not mine, your Metro girls overturned, I puppet
to your lugged and scatty language. I'll boil up a pig
or two as sacrifice to this paragraph and the next,
this merely the bridge to the next and I mean
no diminishment of the past, it flies over daily
in squadrons, leaving bruised vermilion contrails
against our vaulted sky. But this oneness,
does it become impingement,
veer from pleasure
into pain?
***
Toni Van Deusen
