Accounting
Love yourself first
They say.
How can I love myself
When in this neighborhood
Worth
Means the numbers
On a bank statement.
And heirloom qualities
Like honesty,
Or a flair for words
Are worth minimum wage.
Barely.
The businesswoman
Calls the shots.
In her book, what counts
Are the ephemeral numbers
Lingering like old file folders
On the top floor
Of the mirror buildings.
And the total at the end
Of after midnight
Means more than words.
How many poets and dancers
(Even if they only dance or write in their own minds)
Find that the great, invisible Sorter
Places them in the debit column.
Permission
If longing could make love real,
He would know which songs she likes
He would know when she wanted him to hold her hand.
They would look at the future in their palms together.
If she could close her eyes
And make visible that perfect blue
She would know that it would not be foolish
To want him to dance with her.
If she could take the thoughts in her head
And turn them into movement
She would spend time in sparkling Paris,
Or in Italy, where there is no hunger.
If she could change her soul
And make herself a person
Of confidence and competence
She would want to be generous and unafraid
She would sing, even if it were by herself.
She would not need permission.
Table the Question
Let the music of John Coltrane
Contain the restlessness. Let the tension
In your fingers run out.
All day, she has wrung her hands.
Now ring the runoff
From the afternoon’s rainstorm
Out of your chestnut hair.
Drop restlessness into a bowl.
On the table with the keys.
You will never hear that low,
Undercurrent voice again.
There is nothing you can do about it tonight.
The lights in the overbuilt buildings
Make a streak of glitter
Across the night’s lowered eyelid.
Lights and hearts burn all night.
It is too late for Blondie. Go back a few more decades.
Let Trane help you think of your favorite things
Which, decades removed, are not coming back.
There is nothing you can do about it tonight.
