My father walks through the scrub, a shortcut, to get to Walmart where he meets up with his friends for coffee on Friday afternoons. He says teenagers are always hanging around back there, barbequing something.  I’m assuming my father has never smelled pot and that’s what he’s smelling now, so I say, Dad, stick to the streets, because I am afraid for him, even though these kids are probably mellow from weed. 

Bar Napkin Sonnet #7   The face I’m seeing in the bar’s back mirror looks tired and just my age, I hate to say, as if I need a sign that’s any clearer I been on the floor lookin’ for a chair to get more sleep and drink much less ouzo. The lecher breeze billows around my skirt, wafts cigar ash and petals through windows left standing open today for the first authentic afternoon of spring this year.

Translated from the Greek by Shorsha Sullivan  

Uncle   Surrounded by the Iron Curtain, all things faded faster: suits slicked at the elbows and especially the knees, shoes scuffed as though from constant kicking. You, too, magician of my childhood, conjuring something from nothing in the single bare bulb kitchen-made-do-for-darkroom, lightened to a negative of yourself - pale blue pajamas and thin long-fingered hands folded on the white sheet, all around you the lush blooms, the industrious Soviet summer.     Rehearsal Night   My mother is all smells and sounds of waiting, the click click click of distinctly confident heels in the dark hallway, the anticipated familiar mix of perfume and cigarette smoke when I reach for her hand at the crosswalk, the poised T-shape of them on the small stage as her partner lifts her up, and I am in the corner with pencils and a coloring book forgetting what I’ve been told, pressing down too hard on the paper.     After She Left for Spain   I woke to find a pomegranate on my doorstep.

General Apology Detox