Two from my book, "One Day Tells its Tale to Another"

San Felipe de Neri, Old Town, Albuquerque, New Mexico

After Dinner with Ted at the High Noon Café

Cheese enchiladas and High Noon Margaritas 

and our evening felt good. His arm on my waist,

we strolled around Old Town in the sweet desert cool

of an Albuquerque summer’s Saturday night.

Our knees weak from laughing, eager for each other

we left the bright square, with its crowd of turistas,

and turned the corner to my dark cobbled street.

Footloose, I stumbled in my blue high-heeled sandals.

As Ted caught and kissed me, I glanced past his shoulder 

to see young Emilio standing under his porch light 

in a blood-spattered shirt. 

Against his thigh dangled 

the glint of a knife.

He swayed from cerveza and cried “Mi hermano!” 

I saw his brother, Tomás, collapsed at his feet.

From inside their casa, I heard women shriek.

I’d an impulse to help and moved toward the chaos

but Ted held me back and soon sirens grew loud. 

A sad hour later, we watched from the shadows 

as the police took Emilio and his brother away.

Green chili and tequila tumbled inside me, 

in the sad, sobered quiet of my city’s Old Town.

Spanish Missions

With slow, quiet steps I walk

through the old stucco house. 

Scents of citrus and rose 

curl through windows barred

by carved wooden spindles.

A maiden’s chaste bedroom overlooks 

the Mission of San Juan Bautista. 

A fragile lace cloth, laundered fresh against the dust 

of the Camino Real, drapes a small table 

where the blue-robed Virgin prays, her painted tears 

flow for the crucified Christ hung on the white-washed wall.

In old California, beneath this small window,

did a gallant play his guitar and sing to his love, lying

safe under the counterpane of this high narrow bed? 

In his song did he compare her black hair 

with the night sky and her skin with the moon? 

Did his fingers strum passion and his melodies woo?

Did the heavy boots 

of her father intrude, 

his quick stride loud

on her clean wooden floor? 

Did the youth hold his ground? 

Oh so faint the ghosts of these three 

in the shadowy hacienda I tour. 

It might have been that way. 

I almost know. How can I?    

But I do almost know.

Three Dance Poems—the first is brand-spanking new.

Recklessly Twenty-One

Full out one more time.

Fast. Eat the space 100 times.

Tilt. Torso reach down and side,

leg lift high, higher, highest to right 

flip your body, fast. Now lunge.Do it again.

Do it once more. Once more. Once more.

Splat. Stars. Blood. Ambulance. Blurred ER.

The oral surgeon looks like a young Max Von Sydow. 

He investigates, stings me, forces open my bleeding mouth.

How many hours in a spotlit dentist’s chair in the dim cave of that OR?

No one else helps us. We are alone and I am in love with him before 

he’s finishes wiring every loosey goosey tooth. He’s more gentle, even 

with glinting steel, than I ever imagined any man could be, and, once I’m 

good and numb, I forgive him everything, unaware that the next day I’ll face 

the world with Leslie Caron lips, chipmonk cheeks, metal criss-crossing 

broken teeth, and not yet recovered from my reckless break-up with Jim.

Bare Feet on a Tile Floor

Bob Dylan and I are growing old together.  

These days I rock to tunes in the Florida room. 

I walk with a cane, dance without it.  A mystery!

My dog worries as I whirl and watches from the safe couch. 

Once I wore pointe shoes. Wore them to death!

I’d wait until my slippers were useless, then take

the subway to Hell’s Kitchen. The old man at Freed’s

would fuss over the fit and I’d hand over dollars. 

No human audience for my dance needed now.

Hips swish with guitars, my feet, drums, and my head, 

arms take the melody in my return to the high desert, 

to my company of barefoot dancers. On late Sunday

afternoons, costumed in loose white pants, skimpy 

tank tops and Panama hats, we performed 

for Albuquerque’s brown and white families in the city’s parks.

“Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun” sang Bob

as we circled with partners then all together across hot 

green spaces, covering ground fast, with strong young legs, 

supple torsos. During the verses we’d each solo, while the others 

reclined on the grass, hats over their hearts. Laura twirled her lament, 

Robert shot his enemy with a finger gun, fierce and convincing,

Randy escaped in great leaps from the Sheriff’s posse, I bent 

back, face to the sunset, leg extended, hands folded in prayer.

Soon after the company broke up, the first swath of AIDS 

cut down Randy and Robert. One had his lover nearby, 

the other, disowned by his family, died broke and alone 

in Long Beach, California.  Golden Linda, my drinking buddy,

my roomate on tour, died young, too. She kept on with Cutty Sark, 

fine wine, finally cheap vodka until cirrhosis got her.  We touch 

again when I dance to Dylan on the radio. He carries us all along.

published by Mojave River Review, 2014

Alice Turns Adam Down

"So, you see, you are simply the wrong partner

for this part of the dance. I'd thought 

someone in a blue shirt, with a side part 

in his blond hair, and your hair is red. 

So even if you changed your shirt to a blue,  

I wouldn't, simply couldn't, choose you.

Dance with someone else, why don't you?

You could dance with the woman over there 

wearing that very long string of pearls.

Or how about that woman in the long red dress. 

Do you like long dresses? Or someone else?

Oh. You often wear blue shirts, do you? 

You don't care for long dresses or pearls? 

You like my green eyes and so choose me? 

But that doesn't matter, to me, you see. 

You are simply the wrong partner for this part of the dance.”

Published in my collection, “One Day Tells its Tale to Another,” 2013

Nonnie in Albuquerque

That’s me, spring of ’77, on the day I moved out of my shot-gun apartment in Lesbian Nation. I moved many times during the six years I spent in Albuquerque, but that was one of my more dramatic moves. I came home from a performance tour and a teaching gig with the National Endowment for the Arts late one night to find all the little buildings around my apartment had been torn down.  My back porch was gone, too.  I’d been away for six weeks and sometime during the first week my landlord sold his tiny corner of the city.  Everyone else got a fairly timely eviction notice, but I didn’t see mine until the deal

was long done. I had two days to move out.  Bummer.

 

My boyfriend Ted helped me move down to my brother Ric and his wife’s place in the part of town we all called the South Valley.  My dog, Rousseau, all my stuff, and I only stayed one night because the very next day I found my best apartment ever, and we moved everything all over again.  Taking the apartment was a financial leap-from $80 a month to $150, but I was counting on our dance company getting a big grant from the state of New Mexico.  Actually the money, which came through, was federal, but distributed through state governments.  Things like that used to happen, you know? Money for the arts and all.

My new apartment was only two blocks from our dance studio-which was excellent, given my penchant for working at odd hours and the strange behavior of my car, a giant, bluey blue 1953 Cadillac.  The new apartment was marvelous.  It had four bay windows, wood floors, a big kitchen, a shady balcony, an extra bedroom, some funky mahogany furniture (and dreadful stuff I had to disguise) and it sat on top of an empty storefront which meant the place was quiet and private and good for parties

So, the move to 7^th St. turned out well, despite the shock of finding Lesbian Nation (my name for the neighborhood) torn down.  It looked like a war zone.  I’d had a good year there, though. Except for a seldom seen married couple on my left, all my neighbors on that sunny corner were lesbians. This was just past the bra-burning days of the women’s movement, and my friends were proudly, brilliantly, “out.”  Mistakes were made, however.  My neighbors on the right, two University of New Mexico students, decided that one of the freedoms they would fight for was the freedom to go topless.  Men could, of course, and the idea was for things to be equal in every way.  Maryanne and Connie took their toplessness to their screened-in porch facing Mariposa Street.  The experiment only lasted a few nights.  My friends sat on their porch, with the ceiling light burning, and tried to ignore the fleets of rude men and boys who drove around our block, loudly commenting on Maryanne and Connie’s choices and honking their horns. That was a raucous, raunchy week; I was glad when they gave it up and put their shirts back on.

I keep coming up with corny things to write about being young during the 1970s in Albuquerque.  It really was something, though.  An era.  There were fearsome rough spots, but, man, I’m glad all that is with me, hanging out in the mystery of my brain.  I danced through that decade.  Pretty damn cool.