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Poetry

Poems by Michele F. Cooper

Flashing Yellow

You come to me on a roguish wave
cross Aquidneck in a shame-faced van
belongings in cardboard,
dark streets a polaroid shield
against your cravings.

It is finally winter and the chill has
penetrated your need for accounting
far from home, the anchor,
as you keep to thirty-five
yellow lights unwitting.

You are a warrior, polish your armor,
check for dents and rust spots
reinforcements burnished
to high-shine invincibilities
no one wants to mess with.

You carry your power in a steel folder,
tirelessly internetting the layers of
enervation, unbending your shoulders
till your rank yellow stars line up
in their best-dress meridians.

I carry mine in tender silence
daybreak into dusk to dark of night.
I am a fighter, too, sometimes lose my
burdens of deliberation as I praise
blue stars for the lilies and tulips

in the rose-flowered vase
cascading the long rooting ivies.
Two pilgrims from different counties
yellows flashing on simple alert
before we meet for dinner.


Helen and Esther in Long Branch

I

When the knob creaks, when it turns
when the first crack of light

falls over itself onto the torn wool rug
and the crack widens and he fills it

with his folds of fat and limp suit
when Helen knows it is him with the

crushed fedora on his shiny head
when he crosses to Esther's bed

and Helen can let her breath out
in deafening slowness and silence

turn her numb senses to a frozen attic
with its stuffed birds and suitcases

a round oak table with hawk's feet
metal fencing that cut her arms and leg

blood staining her best pink pinafore,
stitches in her elbow refusing to stretch.

II

Helen's hazel pupils move through the air
from dusty feathers to battered leather

talons grabbing her only that once
under thunder cracking heaven

in the name of her father or is it Uncle again
moving his shadow over the rug to Esther

still as death under her flannels
Helen shrinking to the size of a black and

silver moth as she squeezes into the attic
through a peephole she opened

in mad desperation with her incisors
gnawing, wetting and gnawing the aged wood

till it softened by the millimeter
admitting/granting salvation in the acrid air.

III

Esther's mewl pulls her back with hot ice
in her middle, past the flannels into the heat

of a summer night, comets and thunderheads
crowding the sky as her heart splinters for

Esther Esther Esther, it'll be better tomorrow
better than this queasy heart pounding

it won't happen again, heart pounding
in the dead silence as Uncle crosses the rug

parading his husky farewell, "O.K., now,
O.K. Don't wake Helen. O.K. It's O.K."


Water at the Crossroad

Beauty circles the maple trunk
in a gossamer shift and belt of gold
spotless limbs not a foot from his
oil-soaked rags drying on the evergreens.

Engine grease on his hands and pant legs
stains in the shape of fingers
bent on pointing, drowning
in the brown and gray of black.

Who will bring clean wet cloths to this
crossroads where hunger and fulfillment
alternate at sunrise and at dusk?
Isn't the answer in others' hands?


The Corridor

It was longer than she remembered
stretching along the floor due west,
she could see a small triangle of sunset

in the upper left of the farthest entrance,
some kind of drape hanging across the
rest in folds, a thick brocade, she guessed,

possibly in browns, she guessed, possibly
purples and maroons. If she made it
there by sundown, the café would still be

open, her towering love waiting under
the umbrella, sipping cappucchino and
writing for the new novel in his leather

notebook. He'd be thinking about her
between the lines, waiting at the appointed
place, cravings for future fame and fortune

filling his belly with scents and spice,
she was one of them, sure, but if she didn't
make it, he'd up and swing downtown

at eight, pick up some baked ricotta and
pastry, take the long way home, maybe knock
on the carved mahogany door of Signorina

Gloria with her see-through dresses and
curtsies, she was crazy about him, he knew it,
wanted to screw her into the ground

while he had the chance, felt the link,
wondered briefly what was keeping his
true love, why she never showed on time.


Burning With a Gem-Like Flame

She scans her screens for the eighteenth time,
opens the radar and sonar, sets the telescopic
lenses to ESE where an eruption has shaken

the country, upsetting the ancient ruins, pottery
and royal busts crashing into chunks and
shards on the cold marble floors of the

Archaeological Museum where brooms
come like robots to gather them, lovingly.
Before the explosion the pepper plants lined up

in their equidistant grid, colorful salads diced
like clockwork, love rolling along like the
second tier float in a white feather parade.

When hell broke through, fire from the bowels
threw boiling rocks higher than the sky, lighting
the dreamy sky with scarlets and green, every-

thing burning with gem-like flames, cobalt
outlines visible to anyone on half an alert.
Brimstone. And no way to think in the fury

of heat and heaving. She's gotten lost in it,
feels like a five-year-old tossed blanket to bed
or rolled at lightning speed by vicious waves,

undertow tossing her head over heels, killing
her with lack of air, limbs flying with wild
abandon, not even trying to reach for help.


Michele F. Cooper MFCOOPER99@aol.com has published poetry and poetic prose in many journals including Larcom, Carriage House Review, Pieirian Springs, Drunken Boat, Paumanok Review, Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Now, Visions/Ariga, nycpoetry.com, Poetry Motel, Fiction International, poetrymagazine.com, American Writing, Nedge, CQ (California Quarterly), Faultline, Black Buzzard Review, Atom Mind, R.I. Women Speak (National Museum of Women in the Arts), Sea Change, The Frontier, Arachne, World Order, Online Poetry and Story, the Jewish Spectator, jewishmag.com, and in a chapbook, Women on Women. She is the first place winner in the 2002 TallGrass Writers Guild Poetry Competition, the second place winner in the 1999 Galway Kinnell Poetry Competition, and won honorable mentions in the 1999 Sacramento Poetry Competition and the 2001 Literally Horses Poetry Competition. She is also the author of two books, founding editor of the Newport Review and Crone's Nest literary magazines, and of a chapbook series, Premier Poets. She lives on a horse farm in Portsmouth, RI.

Previous poems by Michele F. Cooper at Ariga

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