Dearest

It's the nature of language
to exclude, she says.
Right now she's speaking English
so I'll understand, but she speaks
it with a slightly eastern
twang. Do you call it a twang?
Romanian? Well no, but she always
wears black. The tongue, she says,
is trained to pronounce "t"
one way in a given culture,
quite differently by its neighbor.
As children learn by playing,
they grow up molding thin air
across the palate, erecting
Lego toys as existential barriers
insubstantial as a spider's web
and just as lethal
if you're a fly. The in-group
joke, the shibboleth. How
do you know, she asks,
when I call you Dearest
in my language, it doesn't in fact
mean Wasp? A word of many
definitions includes familiarity
as a form of instant
friendship; along with archaic
usages, dialect and slang.
My dear.

At The Reception

Your brother's showing off the step
he calls the Mongolian Beehive,
3 glasses of punch &
a dance-floor slick as
swallowing swords for free.

Alzheimers

Forgetfulness, she said.
Better the knees go next,
so you can hunker down and
gather yourself together
for the other losses.

^

Biography

I'm a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler and also help my husband (a retired forester/wildlife biologist) with his field projects. My poems have appeared in Black Moon, Grand Street, International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry International, and elsewhere.