Jack Horner Berates Julia Child outside the Montana Museum of Natural History

Jack Horner Berates Julia Child outside the Montana Museum of Natural History

 

Perhaps you fed me the petrified eyelash of a dinosaur.

Birds have eyelashes, those feathered dinosaurs,

think of the ostrich, batting its thick translucent lids

and smiling coyly.  An eyelash, you said, pointing,

 

to my omelette.  But it was only the edge

of a bubble of oil.  Grease, you called it,

but when I looked horrified, you said, yummy grease,

as if adding the word yummy would make it okay. 

 

The eyelash reappeared in a stew, then in a sandwich,

then on my steak.  It grew and grew.  Not a coprolite, precisely,

not the imprint of a giant fern or the wing of a pterosaur, just that eyelash.

The tyrannosaur who lost it thrashes in my belly.

 

 

Mary Stebbins, 060329a, 060328b

 

Mary Stebbins, 060329a, 060328b

Attempting Patrick Lawler After reading a poem in Feeding the Fear

Patty Hearst Dreams of Persephone Lost On Cadillac Mountain

 

A highway runs through your dream.  Harleys rumble,

Hell's Angel Harleys, and big semis.  A little platoon

of matching yellow cars flits through the semis, a flock of goldfinches,

a school of fish.  You spot a deer standing at the edge

of the road, know it is about to die, to be thrown

up over the hood of a red car that will careen into an SUV.

They will roll in the ditch at your feet.

Crumpled.  You want to wave your arms to head off the deer,

but your arms are timbers from the mast of a ship.

Somewhere, fog.  A ship founders on rocks.  You know now

you're dreaming because you wouldn't mix metaphors,

awake.  You're trapped in the dream, surrounded by Harleys.

They're revving their engines, skulls grinning.  Soon

the deer will drown

and you will fall

tangled

through green water

in the limbs

of drowned deer

forever.

 

Mary Stebbins, 060329c, 060328b

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

Cleopatra Entertains Monica Lewinsky

Cleopatra Entertains Monica Lewinsky

 

The fanning drives her nuts.  The terrible soft swishing,

The palm leaves so full of holes.  Bill is busy with Caesar

Discussing another dumb war, something about Iraq or Iran,

She can never keep them straight.  Various alliances,

Days marches, troops.  Why isn't Hilary here with Cleopatra?

She should be the one making small talk, but she's telling

the men what to do.  And how.  As if they'll listen.

Cleopatra's tan is die for--so dark, darker even

than the one Monica got out of a bottle in 8^th grade. 

Cleopatra doesn't look as much like Elizabeth Taylor

as Monica expected.  Smaller breasts.  Not as much make-up.

Mostly just eye-liner.  Not as much jewelry, either.

Monica stutters; tries to remember what she learned in college

about conversation with queens.  She tosses her hair

off her shoulders to let them breathe.  Her best feature, she thinks,

but Cleopatra doesn't notice.  Cleopatra speaks

to the slave girls who disappear and return with trays.

Monica takes the tea, in its earthenware bowl, but nearly spits

When she tastes it.  Bitter.  Utterly rank.  Don't they have any coke?

Or glasses?  She wants to ask for ice, but is afraid.  Cleopatra

Doesn't have any, and she's the queen.  Maybe they've run out.

Her fingers sink into the fruit she lifts warm from the bowl

And cradles in her palm, not wanting to taste it, not wanting to let it

Into her mouth.  The curtains are plain and coarse.  Heavy and still.

And it's so hot.  The slave girl, maybe twelve, fans slowly, slowly. 

She barely moves the air.  Cleopatra drapes an arm, long

and lean, over the chaise, sucks one plum

and then another.  Outside the open window, sand rearranges itself. 

And in the desert, somewhere, that idiot Bush is destroying the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Stebbins

For Patrick Lawler  (when Feeding The Fear comes out) (Not as good though, by any means)  [For Monday's reading challenge, 1^st attempt]

060312a, 060311b

 

 

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats

Mary

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

Dolly Parton and Ansel Adams take on the Rednecks 060313b

Dolly Parton and Ansel Adams Take on the Rednecks

 

Sky stretches overhead.  Dramatic clouds, perfect shadows

on the rocks.  Dolly watches not shadows, but pick up trucks

on the horizon.  She imagines a new song.  Underfoot:  clay pigeons, broken

by birdshot or bullets, and one real pigeon, neck exploded.  The No Hunting sign is full

of holes.  Ansel's on his knees fiddling with f-stops and shutter speeds.  He doesn't notice

the trucks coming or the song Dolly hums, tapping her fingers on the spare tripod. 

When she begins singing about forsaken love, imagining Ansel ignoring her,

he whispers, "Shhh, you'll scare the heron."  The pick up trucks speed toward them.

The first truck donuts in the wet field, spraying mud on the Hasselblad. 

Dolly Parton giggles.  Nervously.  Her breasts jiggle, but Ansel Adams, wiping mud

off the camera with a hankie, smearing the bright white, doesn't notice breasts.  It's not enough,

the hankie.  He'd like Dolly's skirt, all that voluminous fabric, but untucks his shirt instead.

The next truck fires not only mud, but a half-filled beer can.  When it hits the camera, the spay

splashes Ansel's face. The third truck is shooting at the first, and red shells pop out the window. 

Buckshot whistles around Ansel Adam's head.   His geese rise from the pond, the heron

lifts from the shoreline.  It's not hunting season, but three of the geese fall around Dolly

with plump thuds.  She thinks goose dinner, until one moans,

soft and gurgly.  She rushes over, wants to be sick, wants save it.  But the rednecks

are splashing by again, spraying her dress and the round flesh above it with mud.  Cold

mud.  The goose moans.  Dolly shrieks.  She swings the spare tripod at the next truck, cracking

the windshield.  She runs toward the third truck, screaming and waving the tripod. 

Through the muddy lens, Ansel captures a shot of it, and another

of the truck bearing down on Dolly.  In the last shot, the grill is inches from the Hasselblad

and Ansel airborne, arms akimbo. 

 

Mary Stebbins

060313b, 060312a

 

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats

Mary

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary