After the Gleaners

I plucked the flowers sprouting from
your fingertips,
green, ripe for the taking,
those awkward stalks
you begged me take

into a jar I put them, onto
the sill they went,
each speaks in turn: I
was a night of sighs, and
I the lace of a cobweb
stretched against your hand,
voicing the insubstantial

and, after the gleaners,
she gathers what might yet
be found, the noise of the
combine harvester long gone,
only the birds for company

shining grains to hoard
against the future, held
hard in the fist, a
promise of bread

and your lands shall
be mine and I
shall be yours

Elements

the well has gone dry again--
and still you sit there
on my fire escape, drinking
cup after cup of sweet tea

barely touched by milk, your
wily fingers wrapped round
the crockery: white, splotched
with flowers, a secondhand

acquisition rattling in my basket
until I boiled it clean, the
thickness holds the heat you
wrap your mitts round, sometimes

wagging a finger at me while you
tighten your greatcoat, settle,
and sip again, your eyes, pooling
black, stare, those ink puddles

as I protest, you see there is
dinner yet to be done, the
potting soil to be swept up, the boxes,
endless, waiting to be checked

off, my signature royally
scrawled on a permission slip,
dinner (never good enough) slapped
with a crack upon the table--

and you would have me go to
Spain, where it would be warm,
your shivers would cease, and
we should live elementally

on sun, and water, and stolen
pears, our kisses thick-sugared, all roads
lead to, all roads lead to....

I laugh and pour
another cup

Gingerbread House

gingerbread edgings are only the
start--see the velvet curtains
of the interior, your fingerprints on
the silver coffee service on the sideboard, a gift
from your aunt

is it bitter, now, in the winter? how are
the schools?

the felines lounge and stare--
they are not discomfited--they
will still be fed

in the middle of all towns there
hangs the traffic light-go-wait-
stop-green, gold, blood by turns

we wait to be told what to do,
we turn, thick with sleep, to
spill barely formed words upon
the table

we throw the stones, the bones,
upon the creaking floorboards--
they speak, tell their tales, in the night, the
long night and the moon
silvers over the grass, this

accidental working of metals, plucking
the strings there, and there again,
long time gone

the wind plays the grass--sweeter still
when cut and burnt over by the sun

New Facebook group -- Irish-American Poets

New group on Facebook!! Irish-American Poets.......check it out!!

Laundry List

so much of the domestic round,
the crumbs burnt black, the
bloodied meats shaken over
with salt, the neverending

circle of fortune turning, the
plate spun round while icing
chocolate cake with white ribbons, the
sugar cloying with sweetness,

the too much of it, the fist of
weariness crushing the cerebellum
so as to preclude speech--what
word comes next? I do not know.

powdered bleach and ammonia, preparations
of pine and lavender, the smiling
woman sells them--does she smile
when she uses them? Oh, the dull

domestic round, broken by sleep,
doctor appointments, church services,
putting on a face to face
this world, time passes through the
fingers like sand, like
floor sweepings thrown into the
bin, all the old dreams and
desires, having been neatly labeled,
tied into parcels, they are:

soft to the touch, fragrant, the
turkish towels (a wedding gift),
ribbonsilk bordered, embroidered, too
good to use.....

the hidden luxuries of thought, the
insurrection of letters strung together

Night of the Hospital: Mount Vernon, Bronxville

the white flags fly on the green,
(visible even in this dark)
flitter in the wind by the drive
cordoned off by orange, the
blinking cruisers follow you in, follow
you out, these uneasy escorts

the night of the hospital: the
faces swim behind the bulletproof
plastic bored with holes for speech to
trickle through

the forms written out in triplicate, the
scrips to be filled, the voices
over the telephone, yes, this,
but not that, watch for the red lines.....

milky liquid, ruby liquid, squirting
syringes, so much of sickness and then
--to sleep

"Chamber Music" published in The Mount Vernon Independent

"Chamber Music" (see earlier posts) was published in the 24th August edition of The Mount Vernon Independent.

However.......there are five typographical errors in the text.

Cricket Song

what difference, whether she
wears her hair waist-long or
up around her ears?

her irises still shift, from
grey to blue, the smocked
dress threaded through

with green, the crickets
sing a summer song, a
summer song of april

long since gone, the golden
strands floating, tangled in the
air thick-fogged after

the driving rain has torn
the heat up from the pavement,
thrown it skywards to hang there,

obdurate, a thick soup to
push my limbs through as I
think of you, floating towards

the ceiling, my red balloon,
my joy, my lost light, the
words that greet me in the night

ever, ever, and again the
words drift up to the windowpane.

they leave their marks.
I scratch them down.

Article on autism and housing discrimination published on Associated Content website.......

MaryAnn's third article has been published on the media website Associated Content.

Link to article:


http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/94676/maryann_mccarrafitzpatrick.html


or, simply click on the link to your right!!


Associated Content, The People's Media Company

Bread and Raspberry Jam

the truth lies in the middle, the
jam in the sandwich, the sweetness
spread amongst the pips that stick
in ones teeth, thicksmashed raspberries

the stones in her shoes, too, the
pebbles worn to pearls by her heels,
the round rock-teeth that Hansel
threw to glitter under the moon,

foiling his stepmother, that mad bitch,
calculating the slices left in the
loaf of bread, the number of breaths left
before she'd be boxed up--

this famine or the next--what difference,
really--except for that still surprise of
a breeze upon your neck, the relief of
quenching water when least expected

a dream of another found and lost
again (sleep-crumpled as the sun streams
in at the cracks) ebbing, ebbing as the tide
draws ever away