Bad Script

One tagline for the first Basic Instinct movie reads, A brutal
murder. A brilliant killer. A cop who can’t resist the danger.

That’s the one where every reviewer went to town about the scene
where it’s obvious the actress, crossing her legs, is sans underwear.

Will she do that at her own trial and cross-examination? Her
former nanny (oops, pardon me, her children’s former nanny)

is suing the actress for harassment and labor malpractice: the racial
slurs, the overtime pay she didn’t intend to give. As live-in nanny

(she kept her that long? four years?), she must have done more
than feed them meals and snacks: see them off to school and back,

pick up the debris that children are wont to make, their soiled
laundry (I bet, including underwear), tuck them in bed at night.

So when the news runs the litany of the actress’s complaints—
the paid help’s ethnic food (it’s fishy? it smells?), the heavy

foreign accent (didn’t want her kids to sound like her),
I think, Oh please, not effing again. This is why the first

peony, which opened in the garden today, can’t be cast
as bitch: too small to topple from the weight of rain,

it merely tilts its flushed face toward the woods
—its unbleached craft and intense color, that of survival.

 

In response to Morning Porch and Sharon Stone's Ex-Nanny....

Milflores, Milflores

Rain all week, off and on, and road construction— orange cones and men in hard hats holding SLOW signs remind me that that is really what I’d like to do— As if on cue, downpour diminishes into drizzle— Droplets tremble on hydrangeas. And from behind the windshield, water is fractals, multiplying; is the moment’s architecture repeated, scaled, sheerer than paint spatter.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Flicker

“…the song of my dark hour.” ~ Carlos Bulosan

Something knocks twice against the dark to make her sit up
with a start: what sound? what presence? what flicker?

There’s a pile of laundry, stacks of books on the floor.
Blinds still drawn: against them, what is that flicker?

One of the neighbors smokes Cuban cigars. She smells
the whiff of smoky leaf, but never sees a match flicker.

She dreams in disconsolate cycles: in one, winged ants gather gossamer,
a dress about to drop over her head. Then they’re gone, in a flicker.

In another, nothing but white cotton sheets stretched out like
clouds. Her feet don’t touch them. She floats, light as a flicker.

That was from long ago: now that door, that dream, seems closed—
Wistful in that dark hour, she mouths a name, longing for its flicker.

As ever, the sun labors across the steep slope of hours; then
quickly descends with what it’s gathered, faster than a flicker.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Book-burning

The fire is a thorough & voracious reader.
Page by page my old manuscript turns gray & brittle
& when the mist thickens into rain,
the smoking pile emits a long thin sigh.

Un-

The stamp on the creased letter reads: No forwarding address.

Three cypress trees whose roots grew networks in cracked sewer pipes (the landlady sent two men to chop them up).

Two maple keys dangling in an old spiderweb: remnants of a winged creature’s wings.

Assorted metalware (25,000 light bulbs, 6,000 vinyl records, 2 gold rings) in an 80-year-old Serbian stuntman’s stomach. And the bike pedal that did him in.

The world’s largest pig hairball and two deformed calves, sitting in glass cases in an abbey.

Last year we read of cheese and ice cream being made from human milk; the other day: an article on cat owners knitting cardigans from spun, shed fur.

That faint smell of wet dog? Probably mildew from the water reservoir in the steam iron you use to take wrinkles out of traveling robes.

Truthfully, I’d rather wash than iron: soap and water, dirt wrung through the cord. The iron’s false promise: uncreasing some small part of life. Singed polyester therefore a kind of revenge.

 

In response to Morning Porch and small stone (93).

Ghazal of the 1 o’clock caller looking for Pomona

The shadow of a tiger swallowtail crosses my legs; I’m in the sunroom, reading,
when the phone rings. It’s 1 pm. There’s a man on the other end asking for Pomona.

His voice isn’t urgent or pleading, just a little gravelly, and matter-of-fact.
I tell him there is no one here by that name. But he simply insists, Pomona.

For a minute I consider asking him if he knows that is the name of the goddess
of fruitful abundance; in tapestries she presides over a cornucopia: Pomona.

But I hang up after saying Sorry, wrong number, and think no more of it. Until
the very next day at 1 pm, the phone rings again and it’s him, asking for Pomona.

And it goes on for weeks after this. I’m convinced even on days when I’m not home,
the yellow phone in the sunroom rings at 1 pm: it’s the caller looking for Pomona.

I’ve tried to tell him to stop calling, that no other woman lives here but me. I
write poems. I grade papers. I don’t make enough money. My name is not Pomona.

The teakettle whistles on the stove in alarm. I butter my toast and spoon
some apricot jam, wondering if they’re friends or lovers, this man and Pomona.

I’ll stop sometimes when I’m out in the city: that dark-haired woman running
in the rain, into the arms of a man at the stop— is that him, is that Pomona?

I water orchids in the sunroom, straighten books on shelves; dust photographs
of my daughters when they were younger. Do any of them resemble Pomona?

She married Vertumnus (the goddess, I mean; not this mystery girl): he tricked her,
disguised as an old woman. I wonder what she’d look like in drag, this Pomona?

Call the police, my friends say; call missing persons. But I’m hesitant. Did she
want to be found, did she want to disappear? Ah this man, this caller. And Pomona.

~ with thanks to Tammy Ho Lai-ming for the germ of the story

 

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.