Ghost Arm (really short fiction)

She woke up curled on her side as usual, eyes heavy and hair tangled. The light through the curtains was dim like early morning or a cloudy afternoon, time had no meaning in the stringy moments before movement and memory. At once she became aware of the arm beside her in bed, a long tube of flesh lying along the length of her body. Her own arm, she knew, must be beneath her: thhis was not her arm. Carefully she turned her head on the rumpled pillow to see who else was in her bed. Had there been someone there when she had gone to sleep? Had someone joined her in the night? As usual, there was no one lying beside her in the single bed.
Finally she prodded the arm with her hand, watching the finger indent in the still skin. She felt nothing. Grasping the limb and levering it upward, she found it attached to her shoulder and felt the terrifying weight as it flopped back down, numb and dead. At last a rational thought crept into her mind: this was going to hurt. She rolled on to her back in her empty bed and closed her eyes, hoping to fall asleep before the prickling pain set in.

Decaf

You've always loved coffee,
late night coffee, dripped hot
from gaping plastic pots.
I watched you drink cup after cup

peeling back creamer lids,
emptying sugar packets
one by one so wild eyed,
unwilling to miss a single moment.

Around you I stayed wide awake without caffiene,
that thin brown dream,
desire the buzz unrecognized.
My hands kept stealing back to wrap around
the warm porcelain of your mug, how I wanted that sweetness

beside me, we watched night
peeling back into day.

I drink coffee now,
I want to be drinking it with you.

Teaching Poem

I want to learn to make coffee
and drive a stick-shift car,
see clouds without sunglasses
and make mashed potato volcanoes.

I want to tear bread with my teeth,
make snowflakes from scrap paper,
taking care to fall into bed each night
white-lipped with exhaustion and
filthy with freckles.

I want to gag on salt water because I am swimming in the sea.

Each day in the years since I learned to walk upright
I have forced my feet into shoes.
But I will not put away childish things.

Fish and Chips

Six senses and you could not see the net
that pulled you from the water.
What a waste of 450 million years.
You were perfected ambition before mammals birthed or
plants grew.
Those ampullae giving such sensitivity,
an ocean in each pocket of flesh,
a world of electricity
sliding through reefs of ancient nerves.
Smooth and toothful you have no use for words,
you are water, not air,
feeling those fields, fish flesh,
suspended in the sea.
Your slick oblivion is no match now for thumbs,
boats, bait, plastic and hunger:
how little you can see.

They fried you in vegetable oil.
You have no use for vegetables.

Dawn

dawn arrived
like an old cowboy dragging into town,
whip-thin and alone.
Asking Miss Kitty is this seat taken
before sliding in for another shot of whiskey.
Already the fog in the fields is gone,
the dew hanging on the first tomatoes is turning crimson.
The world has been set in motion,
the sun a tumbleweed on dusty streets,
that cowboy with his buckskin face
has checked each bullet in his gun.

North Campus

It is snowing
and the white, unbroken canvas of North Campus beckons to me.
Everyone I ask is too old to play in the snow, they give old excuses.
But you agree, we race outside, time stops in the cold.

We write a giant H in the shallow snow, frenzied and fast,
dragging our feet.
Smiles ricochet from your face to mine.
Next comes E. You lay out the lines and I follow,
as I always do, to reinforce your words.

I want to fill my mouth with thick snow like I did when I was young.
I want to throw snow at you until you laugh.
I want you to kiss me.

We move on the L, flakes melting on my hair and your flapping scarf.
Now P, the hardest one, a giant curve, chasing itself.
You are late for play practice but we persevere, limping madly:
Arctic hunchbacks, two crazy Tiny Tims chasing one another.
Then with the exclamation point finished, one last look and it is over.

Tomorrow morning everyone will look down from the third floor
and see what we have done.
Our work of art, the letters that can be read from space
though you can not read me from five feet away.
We have written HELP!
but no help comes.

2003

Snow or Sleep

Nearly five am

I say I’ll be in class in five hours,

You say you’ll be asleep

(curled in forest-green sheets-

tangled in a thicket of slumber)

Asleep, you say, and dreaming of me

(jolted awake into a world of white-

wet socks and textbooks)

You’ll send out a dream-thought to visit me

here…and you press a hand against the warm

ski-slope of my neck just below the ear…

In the winter-bright morning

(a fleece blanket of snow-

more beautiful than cold)

With an intake of clear air I feel the pressure of your dreams,

(a reminder of what you wish you could share-

but not exchange)

and I wonder who got the better deal.

Spinning

Arm in arm

we stride beneath the bright grey roof of an early winter sky

(cold enough to turn our cheeks red but

not cold enough to complain about).

Close together,

our long wool coats swirl, brushing together at the knee.

We move swiftly

until suddenly you stop and drag me around

once, twice,

two spinning stars linked by elbows.

We laugh, open-mouthed, at the thrill

of brisk air and sudden movement.

Jan 2005

Two Days

I went to your house the other day

(I got there early)

and made friends with the cats.

We laughed

and stayed up late

and watched a scary movie (that wasn’t very scary).

At 2 o’clock we went out to look at the sky.

We watched for shooting stars

(there were three).

There were no mosquitoes, that night,

the sky was an impossible black,

the grass was cold (and wet).

We didn’t want to go to sleep

and in the morning we didn’t want to get up

(but the sun made us).

2002

The Crocodile of Time

The crocodile of time

Eats a hand

and always comes back

for more.

One last cup of coffee

in the raining city

- an arm -

One more game of pool

- an eye -

Just five more minutes

on the plastic phone

-a leg –

All add up to an individual eternity

- a body -

The crocodile returns

but cannot crush

a flying soul,

free of time and place,

pick and choose

the pirate ship

- a life-

1998