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Now That You've Been Gone For 9 Hours
I'm beginning to miss how you eat without looking
How your back sways on cobblestones
How you dress in the morning.
The casita has lost its rose odor
I miss following your fingers' dance
How your tongue forms words around flesh, around pits.
After 11 hours I remember once you said you'd wind up in Peru
This is a town 20 minutes out of Penasco
Ladders are left up in the Pueblo.
There's the thought you've run to Abiquiu
Or the alpine range above Serpent Lake
I miss watching your legs shaking on the mat
How you don't listen to the radio you've switched on.
After 12 hours I imagine making out your shadow
Following the raven over Taos Mountain.
Then when I walk by the courtyard bar, Frank Morgan blowing
Well You Needn't,
You in the cab of a passing pickup on Paseo holding onto a shepherd.
I wish now I told you my dreams that I never remember.
Phil
I'll be.
There's the blonde who gave me cake on Easter Sunday,
that's what she said it was.
With her man and her dog
walking the road in front of my palace.
I saw them take a pine down before Christmas
back where I used to have cows,
up to 19 once,
not enough pasture but...
Says they're neighbors. How would I know.
Cake was tasty but I shouldn't eat cake.
That blonde, her guy, their dog.
Say So Little
Some say so much.
Mother frigid, dad reveals.
Husband rapist, mom confides.
Who needs to know?
Tell instead--
Blue sweep of flushed scrub jay
In Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Koi in college pool
April day.
It seems easy enough
Lounging in lawn chair,
Lime colored lichen,
Pulling goat's heads from dog's paws.
Current invasion now two week's duration.
Backhoe smooths dirt in Museum of Colonial Art's lot,
Its alarm insistent.
The stars tonight,
So cloudy,
Raindrops covered by falling snow.
Between Monte Luna and Monte Sol
Disappeared saddle beyond the dippers.
Who would I speak to
If you left?
Variation
Changing your life 3 or 4 times,
hats, keys, who you say good morning to
is a feat surely
decade after decade,
devolving, leveling,
and it is only happening to you.
Not the walking stick on door post,
cricket in garage,
not the pipe-smoking man, dog at his side, crossing the road.
In the end
one marigold in the pot
is sipped by the tenacious wasp.
Every other marigold along for the ride
waits dumbly, heroically,
its turn.
The End of May
It's naive and I'm ashamed to admit it but
I'm astonished by the number of people hanging from clotheslines
this Memorial Day.
Monday through Thursday a representative sample
polish echtochrome for the pedophile crowd.
Friday come to country retreat,
teach their babies to ride tricycles.
As for the rest,
testing second strike capability to avoid collateral damage,
they withdraw, commit anathema.
It's a strangely quiet party.
Everyone dangling from lampposts, drinking wine at midnight.
Spring racing by.
Howard Faersteinpresently lives in Santa Fe and works as an adjunct English professor at UNM-Taos. Previously, he lived in Arroyo Seco, and prior to that Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusets. He Started out in Brooklyn, New York. He says, "It's all part of looking for a home." Publications include: Confrontation, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Chiron Review, Venus Envy, Diner, The West Wind Review, Connecticut River Review, Manzanita Quarterly, among others. Recently, he was nominated by The Berkshire Review for a Pushcart Prize. August, 3003.
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