Dancing with the Duke
I wanna dance to King’s “Take the A Train” day and night,
Prelude to a kiss Ooo I inhale deep night and day.
Feed my peace plants with the heat of jazz,
watch green leaves shoot up white flags all night.
Eat beans outta cans never dump my sacks of trash
The old man in Apt.C knocks on my door day and night.
“You old biddy want some sips from my flask?”
“Don’t you hear the Duke?” Slam the door night and day.
The nice cop lady, so polite, “Please lower the phonograph.”
Can’t resist King’s “Sophisticated Lady” day and night.
“Please let me help.” I offer some beans, a sip from my flask,
She leaves. I sing “Lullaby and Good Night” all day.
If the time is ripe I slip on a silk sheath smoke some hash
Inhale deep down, dance with the Duke all night and day
Abstrakt 444 Gerhard Richter
Why that blue bouquet in the lower right
above the red splotches?
discards of tulips to be tossed?
Nxoxthingxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxNO
closer close closer close
Do you feel cornered? Shut out? Ignored?
Dive into the center
Don’t shake
Do not be blinded by the sun
You can’t look
awayhidecowerfromfirefrom
that with a name
Look at the green top not soothing?
limp broccoli?
Look back at your brush strokes
every which way what?
let the witch slip every weigh it &&&
Slap
paint slapstrokeslap
Swim up around into your strokes
hold your breath
       hold your head above the surface
Why are you scared of   a tiled square
A Love Song of Sorts
You explained the difference between
Claret and Sancerre while my arms
circled your large soft body.
I held on while we kissed
in a bed of straw in the loft
of the campus barn.
You promised tonight, tonight
we’ll drink some wine, share
a cookie. Flying high we
landed near an octagon, the only
eight sided house on campus.
The Dean said over and over,
8 times at least, you can drink
wine in your locked room,
no you don’t need a pin,
or a password, only this code,
memorize- 3452 5432- 538&
We typed it in– try again .
Your time is up, start over.
We broke the lock, danced
from room to room, bathed
in sunlight, each door connecting
to another. arranged our straw,
held each other to fly from room to room
chanting bac bac ommmmmmm
In the morning a chicken shared
her eggs and we sprinkled straw
for her. We held tight, celebrated
our luck with a cold bottle of Sancerre
and one warm cracked egg.
Gertrude Stein Speaks
a dirty word a dirty
bird a time to speak
to sacrifice fantasize do not
disguise or pretend do not decline poison
poison alas a dirty bird a dirty third
a vulture vulture defecates spits from his mouth
ties neat excrements with string repeats repeats
it is a need, no evil is wide, it is time for sweet
relief a hole inside a pot leaking leaking leaking
any decline is poison a no nonsense & no sense sense
it is time to end the first call dares there will be time &
boom in “What we call the beginning is often the end.”
And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where
we start from boom it in it is a need it is a need it is butter is*
* excerpts from T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein
Mare Leonard lives and works in the Hudson Valley, where she is an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT programs at Bard College. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and a new one, The Dark Inside My Hooded Coat, is available at Finishing Line Press. One of her poems, published in A Pickled Body, was recently nominated for a Pushcart.
