You could, if you were so minded,
dab another descriptor onto the page,
something sunny like dazzle or
a blotch of razory silver,
glinting in a naughty knot of cursive,
a wink or arched curve of pencil
under a dramatic swath of glistening fringe.
The eye would be brimful and green,
the hair blue black and plummeting
into an iconic wave, slender with
edges, the dawn coming on, the night
relinquishing stars.
Whole pantries of noontide spill into kettles
and tins, the cakes are iced with vestiges of
sparkling and scintillating high notes, the brandy
will have to wait but its memory is wafting over the tart.
Crumbs are swept briskly into a stolid palm as
the afternoon wanes and sherries are brought devoutly forth.
She did it.
It was her all along.
It could have been no one else.
Had there been less blood,
one might have considered that dodgy
bloke with the plummy afterglow
and the nervy howitzer eyes.
My work has been fairly widely published in journals and anthologies; in a very deeply understocked collection of poems, The Language of Little Girls (David Robert Books); and in two chapbooks. I edit the 2 Bridges Review, published through City Tech/CUNY, where I teach, and am an associate editor for the Bellevue Literary Review.
In ancient times, in a city that was once Los Angeles, I worked in Partridge Bookstore stocking shelves and fending off what used to be mildly termed advances. I got paid mostly in books and experience, not all of the bookstore kind. Other book business: I amassed and lost over a thousand books in a hurricane eight years ago, but still have nearly that many left high and dry. Yet still I moan through my hallways, I have nothing to read….And still I lament the ones that got hurtled and washed away. Even the ones that deserved it.