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

Robert in college

Nonnie and Robert are Leos

My brother Robert has always been five years older than me. Almost exactly-we both have August birthdays. His is today. Our sibling order is Robert, Drago, me and then Ric, who died in 2008. Ric died several times, I think. Certainly more often than most of us do. Alcoholism does that. Three out of four of us kids turned out to be alcoholic, but Robert and I were able to get out of the mire years ago. Ric sank with the weight of it all. I miss him. Drago is a social drinker. He has a glass of wine with dinner, not a bottle. He doesn't even want the bottle. I have become a sparkling water afionado. Robert is picky (in a good way) about his coffee.

So, when I was a little kid, Robert (we called him Bobby then) was big, smart, and having adventures way beyond my ken. He started high school when I started 4th grade. 4th grade! I didn't even have permission to ride my bike out of the neighborhood and he was a teenager in full throttle. Drago's only 18 months older than me and he teased me day in and day out as I remember it, but Robert didn't give me a bad time. He was sweet to me. Robert gave Drago hell, though. Growing up.

When I was 13, Drago was 14, and Ric was just a little kid in 2nd grade (but already playing his heart out on the drums) Robert came home from college with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and a Joan Baez album, thereby shifting his younger siblings' leanings decidedly to the left of wherever the hell they had been. His visits home from RIT and the University of Arizona (fine arts major) were hallmarks of our high school years. I listened to dinner conversations when Robert was home with intensity. It was, after all, the sixties and there was a lot going on.  They talked (I was pretty much still in my Silent Sam phase, although I loosened up a little if I got a glass or two of wine) about everything and I gobbled every morsel about the world, seen through Robert's eyes, that he brought to the table.

Dad was much more liberal than most of the dads we knew, although even he had a "Get a haircut!" period, and he and Robert could discuss most things without yelling at each other until they started on art. Dad painted, usually oceans or mountains, and he had no use for most modern art, no, I'll say all modern art; the good stuff stopped after Impressionism. They'd get into it and Mom would get tense, and we'd hear, "Not at the dinner table. NOT AT THE DINNER TABLE." Didn't do any good, though. The argument would escalate, reach a peak, then one or the other of them would cease fire-without any surrender on either side whatsoever.

Then, Drago and I were in college and Robert was an adult. Then we were adults and eventually my little brother was in the ranks of "out of the house." We've stayed close and kept on talking (I talk now, too, a lot and without wine) as we've limped, zoomed, changed, and grown all this way up. My big brothers are my rocks, you know. Happy Birthday, Robert!


       

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right .... B. Dylan

Angelina Jolie doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving out of respect for Native Americans. I’m sure there are many Americans who choose not to celebrate the holiday for one good reason or another, but my brother Drago and I planned to do something festive. You know, carry on with things, even though it looked like it might be down to the two of us. We could go out, I thought, but I hoped something else would come up.

Sure enough, he and I were invited to share a feast with new friends of his, Louis and Julio. My brother and Julio teach yoga at the same gym. Big relief for me. I hadn’t really wanted to go to a restaurant, but the idea of Drago and I having turkey and trimmings at home by ourselves seemed kind of, well, paltry, compared to the grand family gatherings of the past. There used to be a lot of us. I even had a husband and stepchildren for awhile.   Last year, when Dad was still alive, we’d had our neighbors over, which we’d been doing since Mom died, but they were planning to visit Ben’s daughter. So, okay, then. Now we had plans.

A day or two after my eye surgery (see previous blog if you’re curious about that) I was on the Internet looking into designer eye patches. Drago came into my room with his phone. He’d gotten a text, he said (he hates texting) from Louis accusing Drago and the fitness director at the gym of bitchy gossip about Julio’s yoga-teaching being a bit swishy. At least that’s what Drago thought the text said. Neither of us are great shakes at reading these strange communications.  There were a few texted back and forths, and a phone call with the fitness director (boy was she mad about all this nonsense) then silence. Drago didn’t hear from either of the guys, and they didn’t show up for the classes he taught. In fact, Julio didn’t even show up for the class he was supposed to teach.

Time marched on and Thanksgiving Day was looming. (I had mixed feelings about the plans to go to their house by this time, anyway. One likes to look nice when one is the only woman among gay men at a dinner party-and I was stuck wearing a black eye-patch, over my eyeglasses. I’d tried under, but that looked even weirder.) Two days before the damn holiday, I suggested we order a small turkey and side dishes from one of the groceries that does that sort of thing for people like Drago and I were turning out to be: folks with no folk to bother cooking for, or anywhere to go. So we did that.

Then, at noon, on Thanksgiving day, Drago got a text from Julio saying (my brother was pretty sure,) that Julio and Louis had forgotten to tell him that dinner was switched to Friday at six, and they would like confirmation that he would be coming. I guess I was still included in the altered plans. Who knows? Drago, with admirable restraint, texted back, (he thinks) “I think not.”

Later in the day, our friend and housekeeper, Lydia, (I have a heart thing and don’t do heavy cleaning. Well, okay, I don’t do much light cleaning either) came over with lovely, cooked Cornish hens, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce and even chicken broth in case the stuffing got dry. I could see well enough to heat all that up, and Drago and I ate Lydia’s home cooking rather than the take-away turkey dinner we had stashed in the garage refrigerator.  Then I watched “Night of the Iguana” on Turner Classic Movies, 

(I wonder how that particular movie got slotted for Thanksgiving) TCM, and Drago worked on his current drawing. We’ve each been producing a steady stream of jokes about this FUBAR, then not at all FUBARED, first-holiday-without-other-family or friends, for each other all week. Drago and I did fine. I wore my patch, didn’t have to put a bra on, and my brother has Zenned his way far beyond intrigues, especially texted intrigues. One of these days I’ll write down his stories about Christopher Street, in NYC, in the early eighties. You know, before AIDS really hit, when he and his friends were doing fine.

Um. If you don’t know what FUBAR means, you can Google. It’s a real handy little acronym. Easy to text, too.