Memorial Day

in the middle
of another fight
I walk out

to another stray
cat collapsed in front
of the house,

the Monday
of remembrance
a number we didn’t think

we’d need to know
by heart, the best remedy
in the absence

of animal control: city
sanitation or to bury the corpse
ourselves, plastic bag

the lifeless body
cast into the waste
this sad event

ending disagreement

Crystal Bridges and Eureka Springs

K and I went to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum this weekend on route to my gig at the Books in Bloom Festival in Eureka Springs. The highlight of the collection? Moshe Safdie's architecture which holds together Walton's collection of American art.

The flow of traffic in the building felt too directive and linear in terms of where a visitor starts and ends, and the intel given my security/staff/volunteers (i.e. start at the beginning and the building will lead you to where you want to go - except we wanted to start with 20th century art). Sad that the Turrell ganzfeld had been gated off from visitors - not sure if the bunker is only opened up at sunset and sunrise, but disappointed that the space should be so carefully controlled, unlike some of the other Turrell spaces I've visited. Heard gossip of the Nasher's skyspace in DFW getting shut down due to large constructions in the skyline that now obscure the sky view. Saw Rosie the Riveter by Rockwell, several Jacob Lawrence and Romare Beardens, and a fairly extensive collection of Marsden Hartley painting. Another highlight - on the "Art Trail" - a bronze sow that was so realistic that flies converged upon it.

Sold $80 worth of poetry books in Eureka Springs, including several copies of EQUIVALENCE. And stayed in the most haunted hotel in America - the Crescent Hotel and Spa, an old Victorian mansion that at one time was a medical hospital for cancer patients treated by Norman Baker. I'm really glad that we didn't take the midnight hour ghost tour before going to bed. As is, while taking an afternoon nap upon arriving, I imagined something touching the sole of my foot at the foot of the bed...

EASTER SUNDAY (after John Wieners)

This morning my husband shaves
the lawn, the grass trimmer

choking up before the yard
is fully manicured,

we keep our shoes on
at our neighbor’s flat

Maundy & Paschal greetings –
traditions we leave behind
in Anatole

at the host’s table someone
counts the number of skeptics
out at sunrise

clipping the green while
overheard from
the kitchen

I decided to give
up Lent for Lent

not one,
to be outdone
the native scribbler shows

off her sculpting chops
in yellow marshmallow
tableaux, the memoir of

her characters retold
through sugar-spun rabbits,
a gelatin hostess gift

for the vegetarian mistress
of the household, indelible
while tomorrow

marks the start of
Rwandan Genocide Memorial
Week, remembering

eight days into April
the poet of Boston’s Joy Street

who imagined a new
cross in the wind
a communion

where we are
altered by another’s
charity, taken aback

by the soft push
against the cheek