Christmas Presents

I’m still playing around with the size of truth on the radio. Yesterday, Christmas Day, radio station WBAI broadcast me reading these two poems. Many thanks to Prairie Miller, the host of Arts Express, who aired them. Click the orange buttons to hear the two short poems.

Adornments

***

Persimmon

Poem: Adornments

Adornments

I grabbed Mary-Jane’s earrings in the movie theatre,

Unfastened them in the Hayley Mills light

The land of strange people’s chairs.

*

She stands by her lover’s bedroom lamp

Trying to be graceful

When the cheap backings drop.

*

Later, she betrays me, acting as if she’d

Never known me. Married rich

As if she’d never shoplifted.

*

On the subway, older, I saw

Her cradle her child’s baby

The toddler wears a knit hat and golden posts

*

That glint. Tiny hands move upwards, hypnotized,

Touching her naked ears

Which hear nothing but ancient, urgent, whispers.