Sunday Brunch

Justin called himself a feminist,
promising if we got together
he’d do the cooking,
and I could drink the beer,
said he made a mean lasagna,
a recipe he learned from his dying mother.

His mother had a lover named Sonya,
and they were blissfully in love
after 30 years of loving, carrying,
and raising a fatherless boy into a man:
instilling in him compassion for both sexes –
not just his own.

I was a little curious when the invitation came
written on a napkin from Feminist Justin
asking me to join the three of them
for Sunday brunch in a sunroom
built off the kitchen, an addition
added a year before his mother’s diagnosis.

They welcomed me into their intimate tribe
of books, lilacs, earthy accents
of NPR’s Prairie Home Companion
trailing off in the background
among warm conversation
and acceptance.

I felt a little shame for only half-believing
my father’s view points;
how he feared all things foreign
to his vernacular.

I watched their gentle exchanges,
glances between a mother and her woman,
glances between these women to their Justin and to me.

The whole, sun-filled room was palpable
in these moments of their laughter and cancer,
of Far East travels and trinkets,
in stories about coming home and being home.

Judas and the Poser

Verily I say unto you, except ye turn, and become as little children,
ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3

You are a poser
and know it,
as God knows it,
as Jesus knows it,
as the Holy Spirit knows it,
and even Judas, being like you, knows it.
He who thought his way into the guttural
bowels of a hot-hissing hell.
Wasn’t it easier
to become like a child instead, believe as a child,
have faith as a child? But Judas was the
sharpest axe in the shed, Mr. Money Bags,
who rebuked the child-like woman for wasting
her precious, scented oils on Christ’s calloused feet,
for he knew the importance of a budget,
and couldn’t factor in those “Calvins”
and their Calvinistic plan for predestination -
Judas ultimate demise.

So you take cue from his mistakes, and you pray prostrate
on your face: fear the MAN - the REAL MAN,
not Bush’s Administration, knowing only HE
can kill both body and spirit. You believe and believe
and believe but you read the demons believe and tremble
so where does that leave you, really?

Slumming

Sometimes unconsciously,
always unconsciously,
Vivienne wrote down vagina for Virginia,
the southern state she was born and lived in
with their bless your heart
code for kiss my ass
below the Mason-Dixon,
in her pants, in his backseat,
near the tracks going slumming,
and she did what rhymed with slumming –often
during summer vacation
while bourgeois girlfriends
were in Paris studying art
and the French language:
Vivienne was learning French kissing
from a dyslexic boy with one thumb,
who’d lost it in a saw mill accident.

How she kissed the waxy, pink scar,
stuck the nub in her mouth,
it was the most real she’d ever felt.
So imagine what he thought
when she walked by him in the parking lot,
her perfect, ponytail swaying –
waving a goodbye,
with tan, strong arms full of books,
layered up in front of her chest like collegiate armor,
knowing he couldn’t read,
knowing he couldn’t make out those L-O-N-G vowels:
he wasn’t going where she was going.

Vivienne married into a prestigious clan,
birthing them a fourth generation “Bernard,”
and she hated the name, the family, mother-in-law,
her husband’s dubious sexuality.
Over time, she grew soft in the body but hard in the face,
and knew it should be the other way around –
harder in the body, softer in the face.

And when she drove by the old, saw mill
now abandoned, covered with ivy
and spiraling trees,
Vivienne couldn’t help wonder
about the boy with one thumb
who wasn’t going where she was going.