PATRICIA GOMES

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CHRISTINA'S APPREHENSION

We carved patterns
in the window shades,
ruining them for all time.
Silliness in fairy silhouettes,
ivied borders that danced with Wind's kiss.
Pretty contours, useless shapes,
we watched the day pass
through tulips cast upon the mildewed carpet
and wrote a poem
in seven rhyming parts on the Immaculate Conception.
Innumerable cups of tea,
your hands shook as you played Mother.
Forebodance,
palpable and as sharp as lemon slices
left to shrivel on the saucer's gold edge,
intensified
as we squandered hour upon hour.
I should have left
much sooner, but could not
leave you
sitting cross-legged
in stenciled sunlight.
We peeled hardened white glue from our fingertips,
our prints preserved for your cigar box.
Was that your idea?
It was after that
you extracted my vow,
sunset-purple after that,
while I cleaned your hands with ice water;
your breath feverish and misguided,
too close
to my ear, you whispered,
"Promise me …
promise me we shall never,
never,
speak
of the moon."

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FATHER TOM LOSES THE RAFFLE

Father Tom wants my deathbed confession.
He told me so with no shame
on his freshly shaved face.
As if I owed my perversions to him.
I'd rather a priest with a beard
administer my Last Rites,
though are they truly a necessity?
My father's heart ceased to beat without
their ostentation.

She asks if I'm distressed.
How could I tell?
Things are as things are.
If I am, it's because of the legions
inquiring after my heritage,
as if it's their business, as if
hoping to form a bond.
Names. Gather nothing
from a name. I am
whatever I decide to call myself
today. On Thursdays, I choose
Ann.

Candace. I used her in a poem once-
so did John. I hate that he and I share
near titles. That we write of bitter drafts,
square buttons, and lovers whose names
were onions in our soup.
I hate that he's been here longer,
that he's older. He's used up
my time before I've gotten started.
My time, my words-
how can I not be distressed
when lobster bisque is still a riddle?

Ah, Father, you lose.
I have been a sinner,
a liar,
a larcenist,
a vilifier,
an adulterer …
a whore.
But I've done so publicly,
under my own name,
never
hiding from God.

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CONTRASTS FOUND AMID EARTH TONES

It was frightening
dragging that first
chalk
over the paper; fifteen years
since I'd last closed the box.
Blind, too terrified to actually look, my fingers sought the purples.
Not the muted purples, but the brilliant,
jeweled ones. Rich amethyst.
Gently, gingerly,
as if pulling tape off a butterfly's wing,
the chalk touched the paper.

I was so afraid

that it wouldn't come out right,
this simple square of purple.
I would ruin it.

I do this
with everything, you said.
You meant
that I do it
with us.

Four powdery strokes
and the panic settled; I began to blend.
I added Red Clay and Sunflower
Yellow.
Colors for gathering … straw baskets in fall.
The canvas begged for paint; how could I say no?
Mixed medium-

so like we two. Should I tell you a secret?
I think I must.
You were my beginning;
you started it all, this thing,
as you call it, that I have for brown
-skinned, green
-eyed, dread
-locked men.
They are all you / they are not
you.
X,
the original muse.

Mixed medium.

I added five
tiny Forest Green leaves
of acrylic, no more than whispers, really.
Understated, but there.
I suppose you'll make something of that in time.
McGeary uses pine needles, sand, and coconut fibers
to achieve peace, combed lines, and receding tides;
I wonder
if he catches the scent
of his original muse on a wave.
And if he does, does he put the brush down
and inhale huge gulps of air
until he is filled and renewed?

Fears abate, Horatio;
I did not ruin it. I am content,
if nothing else, with this canvas.
I will call it Jocelyn's Tears
and continue to chase contrasts-at home,
in my own skin.

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AMBUSHED

Sometimes
(but not often
enough)
when I read a poem I have to rush,
hurry through it because the beauty,
the arrangement,
the Art
of the words throws me off
and I feel like I've stumbled
onto a secret.
Like being little and catching your parents making love.
I'm an eavesdropper;
I'm undeserving, shamed and humbled,
so I hold my breath

zipscan

slam the book closed. Make a cup of tea,
maybe light a cigarette and take a drag or three
before sneaking the book open again
for a good long peek
Takes me a few times before I can bathe in its magnificence,
let it wash over me-a waterfall
of some wunderkind's vision.
It's like that for me sometimes.

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UNIVERSAL STUDIES

He is a scholar -
sees his grandmother in the lame back legs
of the logger's ancient one-eyed dog
tottering towards its supper dish.
He's learned to count
the bands on caterpillars before laying
in a winter's supply of cord wood.

There are set patterns.

Prefigurations to solar flares, symmetry
in the muddy whirls of eddies, theme
to the suckmouth legs of pale starfish.

There are no coincidences - only

set patterns.
His grandmother,
blind and beloved,
toothless and sly,
taught him to first read
the tea leaves,
then
act accordingly.
His children's names
were numerologically conceived.

Patterns and designs. Blueprints and outlines.
He's lost for days at a time
to the knots of Persian carpets.