SELECTED POETRY

by
Kathy Polenberg

BREAK ME EVEN

dog and cat break me even
cat came stray
okay I feed him
okay I like to love him
Fuck! he has seizures
Vet says epileptic
put cat on pheno
No fair! not even

drug store charge me five
instead of fifty bucks
their mistake he's covered
(he’s not my "boy" named Chuck)
okay I’ll keep him
cheap enough

now today dog looks
about ready to die
can’t walk she tries and
can’t stand no more
she’s willing to go right
there on the floor I can’t
just can’t watch this
Vet says bring her

she got a needle plunger
full of lethal last frisbee
her teeth snapped fast on
that “good catch” I told her
she retrieved it home
away from
me even
before her legs stop
running I tell my kids
I’m not funnin’ with you
do me this way -

when my day comes I can’t
stand up and run
wrap me up in a blanket
pack me in the back seat
and take me out
like my dog
for the lethal needle frisbee

put the ash in a
coffee can I don’t care
but don’t you dare leave
the blanket behind there
bring it back home
so I can rest knowing
I died broke even

© Kathy Polenberg

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SISTER

the little tow-head boy
had a hieroglyph mind
putting pictures to words
he liked to define

like “hot” went with stove
and “school” with tight shoes
then one day he forgot the word
for someone he knew

the tall bare-legged girl
with the long brown hair
conjured a new word in his chest
beside those already there

he saw her in the yard
the hot sun on her braids
and his heart pronounced
“Pretty”
as he quietly played

© Kathy Polenberg

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CLOSET CONCERT

you are invited to sit down
with me and eat
on the corner
where the quarter round
and sheet rock meet

where the plank boys
make their loud singing noise
as their open mouths roar
I see them ingrained
in the pine wood floor

I hear music in milled
lumber where it stops still
at the door sill calling
ants to come over through
the daylight crack as sirens wail

they set up tiny drums
brought in on their backs
on the flat head nails
that are wrongly driven
to keep me mute and hidden
and in my place

© Kathy Polenberg

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INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC

the first music I ever watched
before I could hear
before I could read
was music made by typesetters
back when it was hot type
their hands knew more than their eyes
where the letters are in the typecase
plucking and picking the punctuation
composing the words into sentences and
making paragraph spaces and mastheads
hot wax sounded jazzy
the pressman loading rolls of
newsprint , I mean rolls without end
always more written and letters cast
paper cutters razor percussions swoop
ink sounding loud in black and
singing along to colour on the comic page
rubber cement and nonrepro blue pencil on
invisible graph come in and the pressroom is exploding now with glory
of music
to a person kneehigh to
a roll of newsprint
just tall enough to drop a dime
in the vending machine for a rootbeer
and that sweet candy taste
and the sound of money drop
stops the music in a kids head
who finds hey I've been sweating I needed that!

Just what I hear when the sunday paper
hits the porch door and coffees ready to pour.

© Kathy Polenberg

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DAMN LUCKY!

If I am lucky
my yellow kitchen tiles
(the ones my friends hate because
they’re dangerously cracked)
plan out their salt licked blue music
over night while I sleep
to flat people voices
and stealth carpet noises

If I’m lucky
they start in singing
right when the coffee pot
breathes steam into the grout
and makes the drywall sneeze and giggle
and blow its nose on a coffee filter
before it lets the yellow singing come out

Then if I’m lucky
my cup heats up to a band sound
so loud it tastes like the neighbours
are watching the weather report
on a big TV that smells like
tapping aspirin out of a bottle
for some arthritis in the knee while
my kitchen harmony over here goes running
out to their curtain rods
drumming up a throaty red
dog leash unwinding in the yard

And when I’m lucky the humming
coming from my silverware drawer
strikes a note on the belt
buckle and the mailbox hinge
of the people next door so that

If we are lucky
we bump into each other while
whistling along to the same one track
this morning catching a train
we are sharing a breakfast of
a musically disordered brain
that causes singing in common things
like what happened today

Exactly that way, so what can I say
except that I am damn lucky!

© Kathy Polenberg

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LAKE OF COWS

she tells her story
a lake of spilled water:
not enough history to wash
the fake name
of man-made vacations
swimming in white
dreams sleeping fornication
a rampant mid-century rape
on clean mud dirtied
a good lake still
she wasn’t born there

planted she sprung
from earth given in to cave
in on its indigenous face
her veins dug open and tapped
well with dollars folded to
shovel shape
to intrude and scoop

and gut out her worm stories
and stone energy and anthill industry
by their roots and make
a septic hole of still water
fed on cow dung
and steeped in the parched
blood of creatures bleached
bones splitting and spilling
a graphite marrow

she had long worn a
wild towhead of witch hazel
yellow plaited until
tractors combed and parted her smooth
making first pasture into hothouse soil
for propagating market-ready meat
roiling on packed and weighed
down foundations poured

once strong now gasping
a mineral breath
exorcised stones muscles flexed
verile land worked for
developed resorts honeymoon nest
on the new roads
under heeled and spurred
diamond-cut legs and calf
in less than half the old walking
distance for the white
hand fisted around wads
of fresh-minted “green frog skins”
they call money
in the bank free flowing
rolling in like unknotted hemp lasso

how their unkempt mother grew
split-level homes she
cradled to sleep on a lakefront dream
while she cried volcanic
tears over the flood
they named the new water
in her native tongue
and it was a lie

but the people did buy there
and brought forth their next children
on false belief and genuine thirst
for more room the
real estate had boomed loud

and crowds of kid
feet rooted loosely
in new laid sod would roam
paw and aimlessly drink
with brothers in the wood that still stood
while the conception of immaculate
water this lake holds her own
council still waters
the only life
that a sister has left to tell siblings
these old stories of their own
cradles to their graves

© Kathy Polenberg

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ONE HIT, WONDER

how does that one go?
it starts with the final note
DEcomposition is everything

it’s a gift
giving up
to the elements
all at once let’s sing the whole show
one song one note too low
equalized on a cellular level
sounds like this:

airport pilot-ready
high alert
only library carpet square
and lawn chair
steady
flag down mailbox broken
jaw open
three-legged dog
shadow Lincoln Log
wood treated in
red-handed boy
history
hemp-colour moulded plastic
unbreakable
seamlessly
crop circle dead grass under
backyard
trampoline

high tight elastic pony tail whips
sweat flattened yellow bangs drip -

drive-by crawl line news
push-button ice cubes
water pressure froth
drain clog bath

what I’m saying . . . is “LAUGH!”

it’s the whole show
one song one note
decomposition riff
it’s a gift

© Kathy Polenberg

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DELIBERATE WINGS

tree
climby
thing
climb bark
on elegant
legs
too long
too awkward
ungainly
employ
of its
instrument

in purple canopy
its paramount
its back
splits
and cracks
sharply
up the middle
not pain
it
has
birthed
wings

© Kathy Polenberg

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WAKINYAN

this bird they try to dress up
in the parrots' colours

because she is smoke gray
as eagle wings

they stick her on pottery craft
like the hummingbird pairs
but she lifts off
eventually

and won’t last longer
than a cheap decal on wet stone

that is heavy as the rain
brought by the crane

because waterbirds
and thunderbirds
are simply not
one and the same

© Kathy Polenberg

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HEYOKA

If you wake up okay tomorrow
(and I'm not saying that I think you won't)

and you said that you really "want it"
when you really meant that you don't

and sticks make pinatas horny
and concrete tans the earths' bare hide
and turtles hunt cayotes for sporting

Well, won't you be in for a helluva ride ? _

© Kathy Polenberg

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THREE DAYS ROAD

before I will walk
the three days road
just once for all time
I would like to know

sound of a fingertips' giggle
to tingle other skin
feel of loud bloodrush chant
the flush from outside in

see a dawn light through my
own muscle and bone
and leave night as one
before I start dying alone

just once for all time
I would love
to know
before I walk the three days road

© Kathy Polenberg

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ASBURY PARK TATTOO

Dear, ain't life grand
on the promenade?
kids, hold my hand
and we'll wink and nod

at them two writing their wills
by writing their names
on his hairy flesh
between the arcade games

this tattoo parlour
makes the wedding vow
of illegal unions
right here and now
with red and blue ink buzzing in
to his underage skin

”For eighty bucks
get two names
in script with a heart!”
they walked down
the boardwalk aisle
swearing they’ll never part

she's down on the alter
of 90 degree heat
wearing a pink halter top
and flip flops on her feet

they honeymoon tonight
and then pack it in
because in two weeks, Man!
the new school year begins

now we all know love
recedes with the tide
and all they know is they got
school supplies to buy

their vows stay dark
and hidden under his jeans
right up until her prom dress
bursts at the seams

what? Come on!
they're young and
it was hot
and anyway, folks
what else have they got?

© Kathy Polenberg

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FLYING WITH BROTHERS

blackened finger skins
and taste of salt bubbles
smell of sulpher strike on flints

"Why are there never any matches
in this house?
I can't cook if I can't light
the pilot! " yes, Ma

cold meals good
cause my brains on fire
training this pilot for flight
the brain rewires

how much finger can I blacken
and burn and blister
boys, I'm timing your sister

now I can stand anything
I've gained a capacity
for anesthesia to pain
I need that, boys, you will too

pilots' light endurance
for the long flight we're
taking off soon and
all our lives

© Kathy Polenberg

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