THE SPEAK EASY

Although writing from Wales, UK, where I live with my husband, baby boy and numerous step-children, I am a Las Vegan. I have published in a variety of journals over the years, have been commissioned to write poetry for Las Vegas events, and have participated in some fun and memorable performance venues in Las Vegas.

I edited and produced the Las Vegas Poetry Alive Anthology, as well as the Poetry Alive Gazette, a publication for the Las Vegas poetry community. Other literary arts activities include: "Unruly Words" poetry performance with Deborah Kohen at the Flamingo Public Library (1996); "Arcs of Neon" - a televideo reading coordinated between Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, produced by Doug Jablin, Josh Abbey, and the Electronic Cafe Las Vegas (1995); and the "Dunes Show" opening at the Contemporary Arts Collective Gallery (1994).

THE PROMISE AND THE MEMORY

One day blurs into another.
There is no beginning point,
No pivot,
Only a long surprising shift.

All that's required of me
Is to shake out the memories from time to time,
Like old leaves from a tree.

Next
May come winter
And a long, formless dream
Before spring,
When we wake
To discover the state
Of what we have planted.

DUST DEVIL ON I-95

How can this be possible?

This furious wobbling cone,
spinning like a fallen penny
down a littered levy
made of such forsaken earth
such spiritless soil
This puppy tornado
kicking up dust
right alongside my
bumper-to-bumper
hot, dusty, afternoon
rush hour
fume-chipped-chrome world
like an errant hair popping up
through a tarmac leotard

It tosses paper bags and styrofoam
so way up high over us masters
of nature
like a Golden Retriever happily

tossing a possum

so way up high over
us Nature Conservancy members
us cigarette-butt tossers
us Earth-Firsters
us earth movers and earth shakers...

I am troubled to discover that
You are just waiting -
indifferent and goofy and
breezy and dangerous,
at effortless peace with the truth that
we will either shape up
or ship out.

You, our mother
who bounced us on your tectonic knee
and nurtured us up to self-centered,
mother-reprimanding adolescence.

A tumbleweed whizzes slowly by,

spinning like a spaceship.

(first published in The Bullhorn, San Francisco, CA 1997)