24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Gonna Be an Engineer (in memory of Peggy Seeger)
Forget all the books, physical theorems, logorithms
and calculus imperatives.
If you watch people who work with tools
and push holes into wood and metal,
you soon understand
that the trick is merely to apply just the right amount
of pressure
to make the ends click.
Dancing with Felix
Frannie Z
Bailamos, sweet Felix!
Let’s build a wayback machine.
Take us to when you were fine
and tough as six inch nails
and when I was built
like the proverbial shithouse.
Mostly, to when we both
could dance the night away.
Vamos, Felix.
Take that shirt off.
Let the fine young men
See just how buff you are.
I will dance in my bikini top
And shorts,
The ones with black glitter.
Dance, Felix.
They are starting the drums
that quake across the room
and adding syncope
With that lazy tambourine.
Show them your moves, Felix.
They are craning their necks:
the ones from the islands,
the ones from East Harlem,
the Bronxitos,
the ones from Brooklyn,
even those from Westchester.
Swing those hips, roll them slooowwwly
like a python about to turn
but teasing until he pounces.
Hold your chest out
and nod half nod your head arrrrooouunnnd.
Make them want to beg.
Then half turn again so they can see
in back.
Hide again just slightly
until you see their tongues
waffling out.
Then break, break, spin
to the high woodwinds
to the flute that goes so light
that it stands your hair up.
Cap it off by showing them again
just a glimpse,
then swirling those hips faster,
slower,
faster, then slower again
until they sigh and gulp.
Oh, my Felix, you tease
better than a breath
of cool air
on a summer night.
You are a long summer night,
the longest,
one that heats the sky
red under summer stars
forever
As long as you dance.
Subway to El on the “2” Train: 1976
Frannie Z
You’re just riding, but well,
you’re twenty-something
and looking, too…
He is tall, velvet dark tan,
black eyes, ,
killer smile…
And the hat.
The hat tops everything.
Unselfconsciously he stares,
you stare back.
He grins. You grin back
He takes the hat, spins it
(revealing a mop of dark, wavy hair).
Catches it. Grins again.
Something inside you gyrates,
like one of those new techno toys
and you want to get right up
on top of him
and dance closer
than two courting birds.
West Farms Square.
The train whirls around
spinning buildings, streets, stores,
and high flying dance kings
in discos
into view.
He gets off.
You stay on.
Pelham Parkway, meet 158th Street.
Don’t stop now.
City Muse #4: Madison
Frannie Z
The produce arrived late.
It had to go on the salad bar.
I pushed it through the grinder
at breakfinger speed.
It nipped one joint.
The manager fainted at the blood.
My cohabitant shocked me
out of bed
on a cold winter morning
so he could march me
through the woods,
Marine style,
to yell at me
for being too sad
much of the time.
The phone company
reprimanded us
for talking about clients
in our spare time,
on the bus.
He pushed in a card.
Fake valentine.
I was supposed to read it
when I handed in phone
responses.
I looked at it, looked at him,
tore it up.
Naughty, naughty.
-25. Wind chill -60.
Colder off the lakes.
Still in my heart.
City Muse #3: Toronto
Frannie Z
I was selfish, untouristy.
Settling myself
into a trail
not yet completed
I dodged ends of buildings
and non-roads
to walk.
A kind couple
originally
from one of my homes
queried me, astounded.
Strange, I thought.
I can’t be the only one
with a crush on the lake.
A few hours later
rain set in.
On this lake
I, a rain hater,
became its lover:
Moist with drops,
filmed with spray
cresting to waves,
blessing urban winds
and hailing their fogged deities.
City Muse #2: Boston
Frannie Z
From campus,
Autumn cascaded over roads
like another sky.
The “real” sky breathed
over skyline, where sea almost
poked in, but only obtruded
in bays.
I walked and walked,
never tired.
I became my own trolley.
Spooling rails, slipping, greased,
over dreams,
I yelled Whitman’s poems
from bridges.
Cambridge sang: a concert
every night.
The streets stayed lit.
Late voices arrived,
just slightly drunk.
I grew so lost at times,
I could have been a car,
but a happy car.
Even in snow.
City Muse #1: New York
Frannie Z
One of the best things
was bumping into friends
or relatives.
Almost careened into my parents
near 34th Street.
Unshut a train door
for my best friend
on a platform.
In those days New York
–four of the boroughs-
was like a vast interlinking honeycomb,
studded, netted, limned through
with people who were mine,
and their friends.
I loved taking trains
to see how they connected.
Subway maps
spread out like tea leaves
in cups, unknown fortunes,
spider webs, but better.
My friends and I
recited lines and their stops
by heart, our subway rosary.
Each weekend
we’d inhabit another train
from start to endpoint,
never minding how gauche we appeared
or how un-neighborhooded,
Perhaps, like some redlined buildings,
we looked too vacant
to attack.
Bird Muse #3: The Ducks
Frannie Z
Every year I lived in Madison,
I would see a mom duck
and ducklings
trailing along some road
in spring.
But it was never the same road.
All the drivers stopped.
Or, to put it more personally,
each driver found it within
herself or himself
to push the brakes
and be delayed
for as long as it took
the ducks to paddle
safely across or behind.
The mom duck of course
waddled authoritatively,
as if to say, “You see
what I have to guard.
Grant me care.”
But sometimes
the ducklings closest
to the front
would start to rock on each foot
as they walked,
imitating the mom,
forecasting their entrance
into approved duckdom.
One spring
it rained and rained and rained.
The four lakes and Yahara river swelled,
then flooded.
The ducks bobbled on paths
they had never seen or taken before.
They seemed larger,
a bit angrier,
flushed yet determined.
They invaded, fuddled around
places people usually walked.
It was as if their new freedom,
crafted by water,
propelled them into strength.
I left the year after.
Bird Muse #2: The Cardinals
Frannie Z
He is a tease.
He flows red across the lawn
and glimmers into the highest tree.
But when you think you’ve spotted him,
he races away.
You’d swear he’s laughing,
but you’re not quite sure
how a cardinal laughs.
His wife knows.
She flies over and around.
Never quite with him –
why make it easy?
She shunts back and forth
on the branches near him,
sliding off a small twig-end,
then edging the far leaves
Overhead.
In autumn they both march their red
and red brown, respectively,
into piles of darker red,
as if to match and challenge.
It’s the male’s metallic “thrip”
you hear when you try to search
them by sound.
But you could swear,
from the way she flaunts
her spins
while prodding the nest,
as if to sharpen her breadth
of bearing
-even though the books don’t say-
That it would be the female
Who sings.
Bird Muse #1: The Owl
Frannie Z
He sat in a tree, at night,
his eyes flashing,
his call surrounding
the tree
in which my crush
and best friend
sat
and more than made out.
I have wondered since then
if his reputation for wisdom
sits mainly on his thoughtful gaze
and round, predatory eyes,
his ability to swivel
and confound.
But oh, how soft his feathers are
To thumb.