Petty Crime
She rose to a morning green and fragile
as a new twig. She kissed everyone
and for once didn’t complain about herself,
her frailty, how it was good that we ate so well
because she couldn’t take a thing in. She loved
that particular day—the flowering cherry and lilac.
She put her shoes in her empty handbag for the repairman.
She went down the apartment stairs, the difficult
porch steps, the rough walk. She made her way,
thin comma in the large text of the neighborhood,
and told her son later, that when the two kids
sped by and knocked her down in the bid
for her bag, her two pairs of run-down heels,
and as she fell forward listening
to bone go with the casual snap of pasta entering the cauldron,
she laughed; all she could do was laugh at what they were getting.
Squid
The best way to eat squid is to catch it first,
best if you pull it out of the dripping net yourself,
a gift you didn’t ask for among the ordinary
bone-filled catch you did, and the purple sea-stars, inedible
bad luck you didn’t deserve.
Next to eat squid you waste a fire
To coals, nestling the flaccid bodies
Into the earth for as long as it takes, usually
long. Finally you may eat the small charred
legs, one by one, working your way
to the ink-filled heart. This is a shared
humiliation, and at this stage you are obliged
to press your lips to any nearby lover,
mark him as indelibly as you can.
