USA

diane@informix.com

dkmartin@us.ibm.com

Holding Joanna

Your bottom in my hand, high up
on my left shoulder, the solid hollow thump
of your ripe watermelon self,
sweet warm fruit, redolent
of danger, I want to succumb.
I hold my cheek to your hair, the throb
under the skin of the fontanel signaling
to my pulse. Six years ago, my son,
a miracle of fingers and toes like you,
was suckling my milk so hard
his lips blistered. I still visit him in his bed,
shrine of the sleeping child.
But if I touch the soul of your foot, Joanna,
and it curls toward me, grasping,
as our monkey ancestors grabbed
a branch to climb, I know the pull
of the fruit, the accumulated sum
that bends the branch to the ground
and makes it give.

(The above won second prize in the National Writers Union competition in 1992 and was also published in a Japanese magazine named YoMiMoNo in 1994.)

Ancient History

Tommy went away to Vietnam worried
about his father's drinking, his mother's mind.
He came back six years and one wife later,
downing Buds by the quart
to wash down the Mellarils and Stellazines
he stole from his mother's dresser,
sleeping on my sofa for 36 hours while I read Spenser.
I still see him, one legged stork-stance in cutoffs,
across the kitchen, Kool Filter in one hand,
blowing smoke rings, hiccuping Peggy Sue,
womb broom beard on his chin.

He'd been with my sister before the war.
But Tommy wrote me letters-dreamy sentiments
in an elegant hand, obscure quotations.
Even after he married my sister's best friend,
on leave one Thanksgiving, he wrote.
He came to see me and played slide guitar,
his hoarse voice flaunting experience.
His love-making was like his writing: fluent,
skillful-or the way he played-practiced
till perfect. Eyes closed, you could
almost think it had real love in it.

(The above was published in draconian measures in Fall 1992.)

© All Copyright, Diane Kirsten-Martin.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.