Dear Mr. Colbert,

What a beautiful graduation gift you equipped me with. I can’t thank you enough. Your book I AM A POLE (AND SO CAN YOU) was a big hit at the graduation party I hosted for poles apart.

Despite it being a surprise , they both arrived… Read full post »

A single rose is stretching

Straight and tall in a rose bed.

A warm strawberry pink. Flower

So long it should be measured

In furlong. Standing unflinched

Slender and solo, she slightly bends

Toward her rosy friends. A Beauty

Unshaken ,studded with thorns

Between two ends.

I stand in front of a shelf at the supermarket looking at rows of cans with tomato paste, and cannot decide which one is the right kind for my tomato soup.  How do I know the red can with a bramble of leafy vines is the thing for me? Is it… Read full post »

My daughter Paula sent me a text on my phone, “ help me choose a prom dress,”…It was a small victory for the mother. Here you go, I thought triumphantly: you, who were too cool to… then started typing typical grouch mother stuff, “I told you so, why did you… Read full post »

There is a trap underneath your sunny weather condition.

It’s a sweet nature direct intervention

Meteorologists like to call inversion.

An euphemism, for sure, when you think of

Lapislazulean sky that stretches above your head

And leaks into snow-capped mountain peaks

While the cold air… Read full post »

You will deny me three times

Before the rooster crows.

Each time with oblivion

And nonrecognition. The position

You choose to protect your own 

Interests: invested in yourself,

for yourself, by yourself, until a bigger

Fish swallows you too. Like right now,

I hear you in the belly of your replac… Read full post »

If you want to impress me

Caress me with a triple diamond.

Guide me to the butte

Take me down the chute,

Meet me at the colouir

With the hanging rock above

And the Northern Star below.

Be my Picabo Street or Tom Moe

And when I take a long… Read full post »

I woke up from a nightmare. It is an easy recipe. You go to a good-old Mexican place for dinner and order a crisp tortilla that looks like a tropical island finished with refried pinto beans, onions, and jalapeños, that you wash  down with a house margarita on the rocks. It… Read full post »

                     A Spoonful of Water

We will never know what she meant when she said,

“I’d drown you in a spoonful of water.”

Did she really mean harm?

Did she have in… Read full post »

Titanettes, female fauna,

naked as the rumbling of barrels.

They roost in trampled beds,

asleep, with mouth agape, ready to crow.

Their pupils have fled into flesh

and sound the glandular depths

from which yeast seeps into their blood.

Daughters of the Baroque. Dough

thickens in throughs, bath… Read full post »

 
True Love

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way -… Read full post »

“We smoke the last cigarette and drank the last coffee,” said Michal Rusinek this morning,when asked about if he had a chance to say goodbye to Wislawa Szymborska.

A Polish poet and the Nobel Prize Winner died yesterday evening in Krakow at the age of 88. Michal Rusinek has been a pr… Read full post »

He leans against an elevator.

A fascinator for a day.

They chat about the weather.

The overcast and winter storm.

He checks her whereabouts and

Where is destination.

The fifteenth floor. Voila.

An elevator folds inside

And fills… Read full post »

Nikky Finney’s newest book of poems: “Head Off and Split” swept the poetry world, and landed the poetess on the cover of Poetry Magazine. It was even before the National Book Award for Finney made it official. Being a literary celebrity has it perks, which means you talk to the poet… Read full post »

The Georgia Boy basking in B

Found a Bee -wrapped--box under the tree.

A bevvy of opportunity.

Red ribbon sealed the clean slate creation

When Santa Clause paid for his education

And though  the North Pole is equally cold spot

It sure can… Read full post »

When Polish pilot, Tadeusz Wrona landed Boeing 627 on its belly on 11/01/11 at the Okecie Airport in Warsaw, without much fuss or traction-reducing foam, I let out a sigh of relief, then applauded, with due admiration. The adage was coined instantly: Fly like an Eagle, land like Wrona. The… Read full post »

While the country was on a shopping spree Black Friday to Cyber Monday, Paula, yellow pad and pencil in hand, spent the weekend making a budget for the baby she’d carry to school and care for this week. Two weeks -- to be exact. It’s a flour baby season… Read full post »

 Bart came home for Thanksgiving on the Amtrak train wearing a sign on the cardboard paper “Justice for Student Loans.”  He said he’d met an interesting girl on the train, who sat next to him and was well equipped for the late night talking with a traveling size bottle of… Read full post »

"The best life is suspected, not examined."

                                             -Kay Ryan

The slice of orange hovered

 At the head of the road.

 I was going… Read full post »

The door opened creaking

And the fluorescent tube hums.

Then, reluctantly turns on

The interrogative stream of white.

An old green trench coat is making

Faces baring its white teeth at the neck inseam.

Long, bright-colored scarves snake

Around… Read full post »

Driving through Pennsylvania on I-81

Listening to Pat Metheny as my  

Bay horse climbs the 1246 feet of the

Polish Mountain, and the stretch behind.

The layers of lands… Read full post »

Among the graves at dusk

The leaves rustle, a dog appears

Behind the fence and trots along.

Is he alive or dead or not at all.

The granite touch of autumn grave,

The stone cross with cyrylic slant ,

Blunt swish of… Read full post »