Karen Greenbaum-Maya
Waitress at the Wagon Wheel
Open elbows collide in space.
Hungry kindred float and loaf.
These times call for dusty untouched greens.
Elsewhere, silver science hums, stops.
Here, History means: famed crimes.
History votes: forget those golden texts.
Every decent guy knows the trick called faith
when fists disperse 32 rival gods.
An archaic woman orders a good meal.
The first city used to be the universe.
The universe was first a city.
Your mission: sell diners truth, unasked.
Double abecedarian for two sisters
Aneurysm took Aunt Thelma, whose coma raised such buzz.
Bleeding in the brain gave her six months of dying slowly.
Cause of your mother’s death too, Mom, at just fifty-six.
Didn’t I sob when Thelma died, harder because I knew
ending when I heard it. Blessed St. Nureyev,
find me the way to pick through family kudzu.
Guaranteed: I will bring only disappointment.
Hugging me feebly by the coffin, your body stiffens.
It holds me off while Thelma’s husband, philanderer,
jerk, weeps hard. For this I need much more than IQ.
Knowing you, you’ll expect me to crave making up,
like I’ve always done—yet this time, I cannot go
make my grief small, not on Forest’s zombie-green lawn.
Now will be the time when everything goes dim.
Outdoors, L.A. at noon, white glare hits our black memorial.
Plaques surround us where your spotlight sees me, the basilisk
quivering with tears, all ready for my plea for pardon. Aunt AJ
ran home to Tarzana to set out bagels, but you wait, irrational as pi,
still wronged—and angry, at me as usual? Oh, yeah.
You are accusation in a new black suit, waiting and harping.
Unplanned, new words opened to me leaf by leaf.
Venturing from if-not-now-when to you, they freed me.
Wondering still why you’re not one I’ve missed?
X-acto knives, your words cut me down in public.
Yes, I was only relieved to be rid of that impossible job.
Zilch to want back, except for Aunt Thelma.
Author Bio
Karen Greenbaum-Maya is, among other things, a clinical psychologist in California. She has placed poems and photographs in many publications, most recently Off the Coast, qarrtsiluni, In Posse Review, Statushat Artzine, Tipton Poetry Journal, Poemeleon, Inlandia, dotdotdash, Waccamaw, and Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. She was nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Eggs Satori, was a finalist of note in Pudding House Publications’ 2010 competition, and will be published in 2011.
