Molly Goatwax

The Future in Fur

We'll make money raising ferrets
Feed them cream cheese and carrots
They will all sing and toast our merits
From thier rusty little garrets
As they pet and tend the ferrets
Raised on cream chesse and carrots.

Public Flannel

  Yesterday someone denuded

the fire hydrant on the corner

    of the sweaty abandoned shirt

I had so carefully buttoned

   around it the day before.

I think it must have belonged to

 an overheated masonry man;

   the devil behind the wheel

of a rusting muscle mobile.

Today, passing by the hydrant

   I notice the shirt had been

   buttoned back into place.

 

 

warm winter nights

     I went out to look up tonight

     and the sky was green.

   Last night it was orange.

     Recently the weather was foggy.

     I saw an elaborate screen of bare black branches

   in front of me,

   Against a pink array

    halo'd by the broken moon,

     and the street lights as

  the rumbling freight train went by,

    way down the granite hill.

Winter Poem

 Toying with the toilet 
   it runs, it runs.
After a long hiatus
The ice machine clatters again.
   Somewhere a smoke alarm 
has been chirping for weeks...
  Is it mine? Is it mine?
 It's raining ice balls 
that drum against the window panes.
As the temperature rises,
it turns into rain.
 The rain, the rain.

Sent from Molly

Blackberry Lane

The concrete was made long ago

with oyster shells

(tabby), rough underfoot

as I pass wrought iron gates

overgrown

by flowering vines

between the hidden stair cases

and gardens fragrant with

boxwood and basil.

I hear songbirds in the shade

and through open windows,

lessons practiced on real pianos

in large plastered rooms.

Cutlery clinks on heavy china.

Here and there

beside the recycling bins

you may find

barely worn shoes lined up

neatly on a retaining wall,

a porcelain lamp or a teak end table.

Once I scored

a box of picture frames with glass and wire

two weeks before my show.

There I lurk in the lane

collecting chairs

by the side of the road.

A poem

I remember that day
Driving in the sun
I saw a bust on Coldspring
A license plate that read
Eschew Confuscation
And step dancers in the median strip
In spangly tutus
Wagging buckets for change

A Poem

 

The Trainwreck on Railroad Avenue

   

 

     Behind a door

        inside a drawer

   hidden from the light of day

     a sad little secret

    is tucked away.

misplaced muzzles

Dapper in his Monday suit
the neighbor walks his matching white dogs
obediently harnessed

As he meets my glance
jaw muscles ripple
hostility betrayed
.

A poem

Behind me at the grocery
was the lady
who lives down the street
As she arrayed the belt
with pineapple cottage cheese
and ears of corn
in cellophane
I knew
we'd never get along.

As the leaves skitter

I saw a boy on stilts

wearing a broad black hat

and a striped blanket for a cape

lurch up the sidewalk.

A girl in a globe skipped next to him

practicing for Halloween.