giving lemons to a sourpuss is fruitless

I can forget, momentarily, that young female business travelers are on occasion mistreated for not having a bunchy leather pillow stuffed with cash in their pocket, propped up structurally by an "it's ok, I'm on a business trip" flying man-buttress. Nor will I dwell on the fraying of my last nerve by the evil that are petroleum-laced cosmetics, staining with one nefarious "pook" my otherwise virginal white cotton summer dress, moments before the criminally placed hairdryer falls into the sink, cord still coiled like a southern black snake on a young pine, waiting to strike me.

But freaking Berkeley has lemons, on trees. And someone just smiled and gave me salt. And maybe the ghosts of the Claremont will break the life-long paranormal boycott on me. I'll bet Oppenheimer was here, the brush and sway of gentle St. John on his mind and a curse to the pink California horizon just flirting with a shape, "o...." And I'll bet those lemon-tree owners don't appreciate their lemons like I would, rosemary and olive oil, some coquette vinagrette that it is physically impossible to mess up.

I'm plucking that lemon tomorrow. That makes me a no-account sourpuss lemonnapper.

So be it.

vernal view

I do not mind sitting backward
sticks blur and pink blooms wisp
by in my single seat not by the others

I saw a subterranean march early spring -
little soldiers with lapel pins their weapons.
We hold the little secrets of ourselves
like treasured playing cards

And in the springtime they are so wet and full
in our quick hands dirt and creosote and birdsong -

But by crisp sudden autumn,
they blow away, the childhood leaves
turn vermillion and are gone

social justice and a hot breakfast

"You're looking very warm today;"
the sweet low twang of a southern man's voice
floated over the scrambled eggs and sausage
in the breakfast buffet. I said,
"I have to bundle up like nanook to be comfortable,"
matching vowels with him.
"I know that's right. Are you from the south?" he asked, I paused-

"Louisiana and southeastern Texas..and it doesn't get this cold there."
I wasn't sure why he wanted to know, but then came the verbal missive
on New Orleans, the humanitarian work out of Grand Lake his group
had done, the ongoing crisis, the old cypress guards of the fleur de lis
crumbling under the dismissive wave
of administrative orders.

It is not unreasonable to get nostalgic around this time.
Mardi Gras is around the corner. The displaced look for warmth in
each other.

He said, "you been back home
lately?" Home, I think about Home.

and he's right, Louisiana has always felt like home -
they say, where your bare feet first patter, that's the place that
matters, and to me - so deeply in my skin I feel it, I touch my chapped
winter hands together and think about the miracle in missing humidity-
he and I are suddenly in some space together, speak in the same voice,
and in that moment I feel a purple, green and gold emblazoned thanksgiving,
and when he says, "I'll get this one, you just do it for someone else
soon," I could just take off my hat and walk confidently
out into the bitter DC cold.

but ohio is normal

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving

The little white handwritten placards above our heads say “SOB” “MRB” and “CUM” The kid next to me has never heard the term “dear John letter.” He is blond and friendly, from Pittsburgh, and speaking with a broad man would like everyone to know that he charges an enormous hourly rate to make his commute worthwhile. I only know my stop, and will perhaps not know it well. Cumberland is where I hope to be let off, perhaps I will bribe the conductor with my beer, which I thankfully thought to buy in Union Station. It’s a toss-up if I or any of us will be released into the fall night by the conductor; when he talks his voice is full of cotton, his thoughts are sloe gin. We are headed for Chicago, and this is the strangest of routes. At first told to be seated upstairs in the sleek double decker, our little band was reprimanded en masse as the train embarked on its rocking trajectory, that the car was a “deadhead” and that we were to move, by an attendant who was troubled to put together a sentence, or make eye contact. There is a man in our mini-car who does this every day. Every day, 150 miles. Every day, he greets the crew, he puffs up with satisfaction that he knows them by name and by bad habit, by terminology and baggage and perfunctory rule-mandering. There is a young deaf man in the seat ahead, and he is better off not to hear this confederacy of plucky comrades. I don’t think we’ll ever get to Cumberland, and I imagine if we do, I will step off the train and see Studebakers. A woman comes in mildly amused by the gerbil habitat nature of our little car, and offers reservations in the dining car. I take mine for 6:30. It’s a bizarre ride, but
the sunset is all peaches and blue foamy November, a warm Tuesday for this time of year, and we’ve come to know each other chugging along, and I risk my ticket off this odd machine by drinking up.

new orleans notebook

Jackson Square was so freshly scrubbed it reminded me of a time I sat rear to ground and
chalk in hand chut-chut-chuting at an old roof slate for play, squinting at the sun
and a caliope played, some sad sweet tune- an echo I'd wake up to one morning,
thirty years later. how'd you get here? I could talk but it was before I cared to,
and things stick in you
like when you first put flour to oil to make a roux.

I wouldn't know this had Joette not told me, they used to pick up the trash with mules on
Prieur and it could very well be that way again, mules and prayers, cars and curses
it is so damn hard to get around now, but no hurry still.

An old chef told me in bright clean October, if I took my shoes off and walked around barefoot here,
nowhere else would ever feel like home. I remember scraping around shoeless in the early fall sun on stone and
grass, hands red and yellow and dusty, I saw the clown faces everyone did that sort of thing then - and I'd never be seven like my sister, and this old square was a big enough world.

the view from platform E

mingled at the castle, swirled around princes of industry
or just one bright business in particular-
the newest one where everyone wins
and realized no one would approach my chardonnay or my
prayer like stare
that one does to ones' electronic bonnet- to say "I'm busy"
ran down cool bluster to miss the red line just by a breath
and found I'd been tagged with a price on my hair
everyone has one

and then
the beige maw of union station opened up to me
and in two minutes I had a ticket and a possibility
this woman who sat next to me, she had just met the
president's father, don't you know it, she speaks some other language
that I can't understand, but whispers anyway
and with my bottle of water, young men in suits untied
bobbing forward and back staring with black pools
where blue used to be
staring and me and they are so slight and smart
in periphery
buy expensive beer and sometimes a pretzel

I'm going home now
where the heel stops short of the platform and
just as you fall in, a kind conductor offers
"miss, you forgot your sweater"

texas blues

Three and a half pounds of shrimp as big as your head for sixteen dollars. Texas blue crabs nip and I nip back, who knew there were crab tongs? Guilt tugs at me. they're too pretty to eat. I grew up on the Texas gulf coast, the part just shy of Louisiana, hot sauce with every meal the yearly threat of wind and water at your door and the promise of tiny black springtime frogs in a saturated emerald lawn. Childhood summers were covered by a green shroud; couldn't see any other color except for bark brown that you tag breathlessly with mud boots and herds of crickets your only witness.

Playing "outside or in, pick one!" was good until 9 pm and then suddenly sweaters, though it was 85 degrees and hot hot on the playground. The first day of school brought the excitement of pencil smell and playground pebbles in my knees. Why did construction paper not come in blonde? You have yellow hair when you cut it out that way-

Found Allison under a sappy white pine crying, no friends quite yet and there I was hands smelling like cyprus. It's twenty-five years later, ya'll and I look into her daughter's new almond eyes and mine cannot hold back the Texas Blues.