joan dear

If I were Joan Didion,

I would construct

rectangular thoughts

of substance and story.

I would smooth over my eyes

large black sunglasses

type obstinately at prose

tidily fit five feet tall

between hard covers.

Bravely, I would create

the heat and draft of sorrow

and macrobiotic birthings

in nouns, verbs, commas,

periods.

I would disappear beneath

the skin of strangers

tape lives like collagework

in straight and long lines.

Sure I'd swing my arm up,

but I would never slouch.

If I were Joan Didion

I'd be a paragraph

blink blankly at the thrown

together notion of the stanza

skirt the issue altogether

return to my following chapter.

he wondered all winter, and so did i

He wondered

all winter

what her hair

must look like

underneath

the fake fur cap

she wore tight

over her ears

from September on,

when he first arrived,

with the red

and yellow branches.

Taking

handfuls of hay

for the animals,

was it also so dry,

also this thick,

yellow, fermented,

drowsy.

could he, too,

chew as a cow,

on its edges?

Or pulling up

palmfuls

of the dead weeds

beside the deer fence

post, was it wet

and circular,

tight, rooted

into her head

like long, brown veins?

Would it circle

his thumbs,

up his forearms?

Could he band

his elbows with it?

The March day

gave

an infant sun.

He sported

thin shoes,

feeling this warmth,

he sought her.

She filled jars

with water,

outside the house,

her ankles bare

so her shoulders

her neck, there,

solid, skinny.

He hid

behind her

hat, just as

stubbornly pushed

on to her temples

as during

the early snows.

He saw her

otherwise naked,

no matter:

not the water

at her ankles

not the eyes

of animals

and other hands,

only the motion

of his wrist

towards her

head, as he tore

the hat

from it.

at the laundromat on a Saturday Night

I love the Baby Giant Panda

I'd welcome one to my veranda.

I never worry, wondering maybe

Whether it isn't Giant Baby;

I leave such matters to the scientists-

The Giant Baby- and Baby Giantists.

I simply want a veranda, and a

Giant Baby Giant Panda.

-ogden nash-