Rodan's hands
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Poems from Best Lunches

Visitation

I make him the best lunches though.
I mean I made his mother
a lousy
best friend.
I mean I made her a little
miserable.
So she kicks me
off the team
for being what she calls
a lousy team player.
I concede I am a lousy team player.
I never coached little league
or basketball
or soccer and I only
make it to a handful of his games.
But I make him the best lunches,
a sandwich to beat all sandwiches
every single Thursday
and every other Monday,
which he takes with him to school
in a brown paper sac
in a pouch on the abdomen of his backpack,
a sandwich to make his friends say
a little ruefully,
a little wistfully,
“Man, your mother makes the best lunches,”
when really it’s his father
who engineers these miracles,
these visitations
of the angel of lunches,
these mothers-
of-all-lunches every
single Thursday and every
other Monday when I have him,
when he sleeps over and I have another
chance to make it
right.

Sharing the Orange

First I hold it out to you
in my hands which are
trembling a little so you
take them in your hands
you take the orange in my
hands in your hands and you
stop my trembling first
then you kiss me with your
eyes wide open and I feel your
hands on the orange and I
hear the skin tear open
I hear your fingernail tear it
ripping it back without taking
your eyes away from my eyes
all this you do without looking
you guide my finger to the wound
and you press my finger into it
and together we peel the rest of it
completely away without looking
away from each other’s eyes the wet
soft creature of the orange sitting
naked in our hands the smell of it
rising like a sunrise on our fingers
which we hold up to our noses
and put into each other’s mouths
sharing the orange without eating it
tasting the orange without eating it
without looking and without looking away

A Woman Taking Off Her Shirt

does so with arms crossed
over her belly
like she’s hugging herself
and each hand takes hold
above the opposite hip
and off it comes in a fluid
motion like a fountain shooting up
and falling down in a great arc
the shirt rising up and the breasts
rising and falling and the hair
falling and finally the hands
falling to her sides with the shirt
in one hand inside-out

while the man
taking off his shirt
wrestles it off
grabs his own collar first
like he’s going to beat himself up
then dips his chin down like a fighter
into the dark well of the shirt
and climbs down in it
reaching back and grabbing a hold
and pulling it up over himself
and pulleying himself
down through it and out