Table of Contents
Click page 1
Click page 2
Click page 3
Click page 4
Click page 5
Click page 6
Click page 7
Click page 8
Click page 9
Click page 10
Click page 11
Click page 12
Click page 13
Click page 14
Click page 15
Click page 16
Click page 17
Click page 18
Click page 19
Click page 20
Click page 21
Click page 22
Click page 23
Click page 24
Click page 25
Click page 26
Click page 27
Click page 28
Click page 29
The Blog Bog
The Mag Rack
|
One Way to Look at Blackbirds
1.
Daughter, you are to sprinkle my ashes in Bloomingdale's
shoe department
2.
Ashes to ashes -a plague song-a childhood song
we all fall down
3.
Cremation and ashes are not one
Cremation and ashes and bones
Bones fragment at 1800 degrees Fahrenheit
4.
Sift through equine bones
Femur so white after baking
5.
Before cremation
they wheeled him out for one final viewing
Burn baby Burn
6.
Cremains: what remains
Will you have cream in your coffee?
Sitting alfresco one risks the chance of street ash in the romaine
7.
The Women with an Ash Barrel for a Womb
After the hysterectomy, sunning herself outside
an errant ash caught her eye
an eye doctor caught her
kissed the ash out of her eye
married this ash blonde
8.
Ash snows on Auschwitz
9/11.
We are all married to the ash
10.
A is to ash as B is to BBQ as C is to carcinogens
Ash as algebra
11.
After gun shot
Blackbirds fly in a phalanx of fear
Swirling a contrail of ash
Vicki Iorio ___
|
My Life Is the Size of Audrey Hepburn's Ass
That is to say the size of a postage stamp
Not the classy full- bodied Marilyn Monroe
Or a well-deserved tramp stamp
My life's value is 3 cents, three hundredths of a dollar
The price of first class postage in 1953
Be it Syrians, Vietnamese, stray dogs, the homeless, lovers--
I never let life in
Let it be said it is a quiet life
A cause Šno- trouble
life
A jump- into- the- coffin
life
(if that would make life easier)
There were the little troubles: the prickly seat of a cactus
Life sat on at age two
Costume jewelry shoplifted at Woolworth's
Skin licked sticky in the back seat of cars
My life pays bills on time
Never makes eye contact in the subway
Even a small life sends postcards when possible
Vicki Iorio___
|
Clowns, Goldfish and Dummies
I learned to pee with clowns.
Perpetual clown tears drip from primal blue eyes
drop off red noses, land on yellow clown shoes.
Emmett and Bozo blessed the walls of my bathroom.
Most nights, I chose wet sheets over these witnesses.
*
My uncle found a ventriloquist's dummy
while on patrol at the end of his war.
When he lived with us, he'd sit on the closed toilet seat,
dummy on his knee and practice throwing his voice
in the echo our bathroom made,
performing for an audience of clowns.
Ma made me sit with them so she could smoke in peace.
The dummy's wooden body bone- rattled when it told me its secrets.
*
I killed goldfish.
Science project went belly up.
Fish overfed in the morning
died in the afternoon.
Anemic blood starved vampire teacher
made me take their exploded little corpses home
in my lunch box that still smelled of tuna.
I flushed my failure down the toilet.
Judging clowns, unicycle Jesuses cried for my sins.
*
Coming home with our newborn, my husband gifts me
a wall to wall aquarium crowded with
sneering armies of clown fish.
My uncle's dummy, polished to a high shine,
sitting on a kitchen chair in front of the tanks
welcomes me home with a crooked bouquet
.
Vicki Iorio ___
|
