Rhubarb Crisp

Sunny afternoon, end of June.

I walk out onto the porch and sit

on the top step with a bowl in my lap.

I’m trying to mix red and green rhubarb

With sweet oats and brown sugar.

I can smell the cinnamon and butter.

My arms are getting tired.

I bite a raw slice of rhubarb,

its skin a ripe red but tart as a lemon.

My eyes tear up, I swallow quickly and

keep stirring. I remember

picking long stalks for pies from

my grandma’s yard as a kid, the same

summer cousin Ben fed his brother’s shirt

to a neighbor dog. We found the shirt hours later

in a pile of leaves on the side of the road.

After finding the shirt we all traipsed down to the tire

swing in the woods as if nothing had happened.

Underwood Five

I lift the typewriter,

from the top shelf

my arms shaking

from the weight.

I blow off a blanket

of dust and it whispers,

“Make me new again.”

I feed the typewriter a single

white sheet of paper.

the carriage returns

like a doorbell ringing

The letter “o”

sticks.

The keys chattering

self-consciously,

“D n’t f rget me,

L ve me as I am.”

Tri-Met

I’m sitting on the train home from work,

across from a man, his yellowing

beard flecked with tobacco stains

that match the ones on his hands

and face. He’s coated in a layer of

urban grime.

His hands rest on the handle of

a kelly green oxygen tank as if

it where a knotted wooden

walking stick. Vibrant tattoos,

spayed across his old skin

like graffiti on the side of an

abandoned building.

Four right angles hooked together

like a barrel of monkeys, smaller

ones wrap in a chain

from his wrist to his elbow

like Christmas lights wrap a tree.

The points look like legs jutting out

or barbed wire.

What would he think

if he knew that a black man

just gave up that seat?

On the Factory Floor

It’s like the “I Love Lucy” episode,

the one where she works in the chocolate factory,

but instead of chocolates I’m watching golden

flour-dusted potato rolls go by.

Instead of a frilly apron and big white hat

like the one Lucy wears, I have my waist length

hair tucked up into a fluorescent orange hard hat

and I’m wearing a white sweat drenched t-shirt,

jeans that haven’t been washed all week, and scuffed

brown leather boots.

I watch the rolls in groups of twelve—two rows of

six side by side. Like a part of the machine,

I take away extras and throw them

into a white plastic basket and when there aren’t

enough I take rolls out of the basket

and throw them back on the conveyor belt.

I squint, and see some rolls with black and white

machine grease splattered on them.

The manager says it is completely

edible, but no one wants to eat a roll that looks spattered

with pigeon poop.

Sometimes I grab an extra roll and hold it under my

hand, when no one is looking I rip off the top

and let the soft bread dissolve on my tongue.

I wish it were like “I Love Lucy”,

I would fail miserably, shoving rolls

down my shirt and into my mouth.

Everyone would laugh, and the show

would be over.

Breakfast

Bread in a toaster,

you dumped me in a

grove of blueberry bushes,

that summer we jumped in

all the fountains just for fun.

We titled the album

“Business Casual Snow Angels”.

I will never drink the love potion,

no matter how good it tastes.

Why would anyone

want Extra

ordinary?

An ankle is not unlike a

consequence. (Sit! Stay.)

Double your pleasure,

double your fun.

Espoire

It’s an old cliché that

hope is like a star,

steadily burning

but easily crowded out

by harsh electric lights.

Sometimes the twinkling

icicle lights hanging from

my window seem more

real—closer than the

thousands of weak stars

getting old and tired,

dimming

on their way out.

Natural Medicine

The frizzy-haired physician

sitting cross-legged on the

examination table while I

sit in a chair, tells me that

women are lunar creatures.

And I imagine women circling

the earth, unable to break away

from its pull. Having no light

of their own, they reflect. . .

And throughout the month their size

fluctuates from full to a slim crescent.

The woman glares and

asks me incredulously,

Just what, exactly, don’t you understand?