MONDAY BEFORE TUESDAY
Monday cold oatmeal
a shadow-puppet mother
waving from the door—
night before
bathtub water
turned marble gray
outside swilling eddies
forming a snow day—
you wish, you wish
smell of lead pencil shavings
in your new haircut
Gilbert Baily in the coat room
Monday—a smudged dwarf
trudging forest floors with a club
to crush your favorite drawing
Tuesday will come with robots
in raincoats
a different kind of wave
Be careful I said to Tuesday
in size three sneakers
looking at something fluorescent
in its mitten.
TUESDAY
Tuesday waits wedged
like a ballpoint pen
between car seats
Take how a playground slides
the afternoon to a slick of fun
you can’t pick Tuesday from
a crowd but look in your pocket—
there’s an alligator watch band there
Once an egg hunt for pink ones
once rolled oats
Oh just roll over onto your stomach
and do the breast stroke, he said
he was the one in the baseball cap—
the one you picked for me.
I think he is
yea yea for Tuesday
BARE BONES SUNDAY MORNING
One blue rubber glove, guttered
anesthetized but humming
ten o’clock with a craven image
drawn by a Mack truck down Seventh
then come the cornered ones
their elbow bones dragged from bed
I’m a ghost in a sound-proof cloak
I’d worn all adolescence
‘til it snagged and tore
a part from myself, O god
O world over—black hats
of organza wafting the aft
we are all somewhat
agonized in processions past
a wood pew here on the bare
grass of Riverside Park
sycamores—Jesus beckoning
Zacchaeus the little tax man
to ignore the bullies
change the furniture
I go back to grind coffee beans
coat on the hook of old habits
Praise be all dusk to dust
and sycamores
FRIDAY
Put your head on the pillow of Friday
listen to rain amble the down spout
soft like a banana
about to become a perfect yellow
I took Friday to a counter
and picked out a lipstick
we both liked
ruby—like Ruby Road
on the way to Hartford
where Friday and I quaff
a fluorescent aperitif
Look at the face of those offices
Friday said, then sidled the bar
with long lashes, pink glasses
waiting for Saturday to schlep
what we’ve been and done
on to the next generation’s bed.
