This crown of sonnets is the title poem and second section of my book manuscript, Tongue & Groove.
Ciao Bella
What do you think—when she finds you there,
she just happened to stumble into that spot,
shoelace broken like Emma’s in Austen?
Maybe she wanted to take a new selfie
with the tall guy in ball cap and gray ponytail.
You’re kind and you’re careful, as Bob Dylan says,
and ready to show her all over town
or buy her a drink and then take her home
if she’s had too much drink or check out her tires;
you never can tell—do they have too much air
or else not enough? Being a gentleman doesn’t
cost much, and doesn’t mean anything. So don’t
hurry home. Why should you bother?
Ciao bella, you say as you air kiss another.
Speaking in Tongues
Ciao bella, you say as you air kiss another,
pretending you actually do speak Italian.
The thing is you’re practically sure that you do,
two lies like two minuses making a positive.
Now what is the other lie that you’ve told her?
You’re so close to each other you speak the same language?
The words they just come; you don’t even question—
I’ll renounce all my doubt and give you the benefit.
Where does it start and how does it end then?
Have you heard that kids in a small town in Iowa
play catch with a cow’s tongue? How do they get it?
Is this game a kind of glossolalia?
A secret for many or only a few?
Don’t you know what the poor thing would tell you?
The Fatted Calf
Don’t you know what the poor thing would tell you?
The grass that is greener is not always better?
The ancients sacrificed a fatted calf’s sirloins
to their gods in the gallery up in the heavens,
then feasted themselves on the smelly intestines.
But you probably don’t want to know about sacrifice.
Life as it happens doesn’t come with instructions
even if you’d read manual, index, and coda
then read all the blurbs on the back cover.
You think of retiring to take care of errands
that you end up paying someone to tend to—
the things that pile up ’cause you just don’t have time.
Step over a dollar to pick up a dime.
Angels’ Share
Step over a dollar to pick up a dime.
It’s easy to overlook; we’re not used to seeing
what’s right at our feet or up in the stratosphere.
Am I the dollar then? Always right here
so you can say I’m your reason for living
while you admire the rack and pinion
engineering of those who’re more chic?
Like that babe who always asked you for back rubs
and lived in a cool flat right in North Beach—
You could meet her in Tosca’s, espresso competing
with opera on jukebox and disco beneath
while I minded the kid in the fogged Outer Richmond.
Yes, I knew you would always come back to me there.
The mist in the barrel’s called angel’s share.
Devil’s Cut
The mist in the barrel’s called angel’s share.
Though I’m surely no angel, as Mae West confessed.
The night you asked me to be your wife, and I
munched on some salad before saying yes,
I’d just returned from a long weekend
with friends; all agreed we were not in a rush
to get married. Still I loved you too much
to say no. You struggled with plural first person.
No longer I: we’d go West, we’re certain.
Look at that pair of Canada geese flying.
Aren’t you glad that they mate for life?
Sure, I had to teach you to fight;
you said I quarreled just to make up, but
what’s soaked in the barrel’s the devil’s own cut.
Cock-Tales
What’s soaked in the barrel’s the devil’s own cut.
When we had so little, we often went out
for the peanuts and beer in a dark noisy bar
and concocted cock-tales of whom we would fuck.
That one, I’d say, of the muscular joe
whose eyes roamed my landscape with a sad air
of a little boy lost. I could take him right there.
Umm, this one, you’d hum, your Kirk Douglas chin
pointing at my opposite—thin,
her dark eyes curtained by blunt-cut black hair.
You’d stir up the ante and stretch laissez faire
until pretense and jealousy rolled up in a ball.
We’d go home and fall on the hard wooden floor,
the pain in our backs and knees an ecstatic ardor.
Adam and Eve
The pain in our backs and knees an ecstatic ardor,
we rounded each switchback of Mount Rainier,
each of us carrying one-third our weight
—pain eased by saxifrage and the wild ginger.
No Gore-Tex parkas or goose down sleep sacks—
we had flannel sleeping bags and Irish wool sweaters.
At night, when we set down our frame backpacks,
we floated like astronauts walking the moon.
Day five out of seven, you said that you loved me.
Across the small lake you blew a brass whistle—
You’d caught a trout! A copter descended.
Like Adam and Eve, we were shamed by our nakedness.
Marmots and mountain goats watched without fear.
The distant was so far away, the far was so near.
Bike Wreck
The distant was so far away, the far was so near.
San Francisco’s west of Eden, just so you know.
Out in the avenues, you smell the salt air.
But in coastal hills, what looks familiar
takes a strange turn and each choice is squared.
We were close to the van, so you went ahead;
When I knew I’d told Martha wrong, I sped
and then fell; it did take forever,
front wheel in a groove, back one rising
like surfing the curl, my body the lip of the wave
breaking over. You found me in ER, just
blamed yourself; my trick, though, Halloween’s best.
Already dead, I could go as a ghost,
now that I knew what it was to be lost.
Picture This:
Now that I knew what it was to be lost,
we’re on City Lights’ roof—a party, a brunch.
We’re pretty cool in our aviator shades,
the TransAmerica building en face
on the left. Your arm is on my shoulder.
Matt sports his trademark walrus mustache.
Angie just made a great entry splash.
We’ve all done some heavy pakalolo.
When the ectopic broke—I fell down as if shot.
Essie, our drug-dealing Iranian neighbor,
got me a taxi. When he is deported, do they
cut off his hands? It’s not in the picture;
nor whether the future for us holds a child.
We’re totally smashed on the rooftop meanwhile.
Houseguests
We’re totally smashed on the rooftop meanwhile.
Our son was conceived on Vancouver Island
when we went to visit Steve and Kristine
(so he’s sort of Canadian or at least in between).
We brought them a house gift, a gram of cocaine.
Was it the wind in the bushes? I don’t really know,
or Steve watching us through the window.
I never told this to anyone before.
Kristine and Steve had twins and divorced.
You know Jonathan Swift’s Lilliputians,
their war over which end of an egg to eat?
Now Little or Big Endian machines compete
over which byte they need to read first.
Your glass is half full. Half empty is worse.
Testa Rossa
Your glass is half full. Half empty is worse.
You dream you’re the Pope and you get a Ferrari.
(Call me dream-buster—no chance that’ll be.)
And I’m a backseat driver in any old seat.
We fight over this, over how to say sauvignon,
over ketchup on French fries, milk in the tea,
and over and over we fight about dancing.
I want to swing dance, with its twists and its kicks.
You’ve got parasomnia—in your sleep you kick me.
I think it’s a guy thing, like driving too fast.
Do you know the Ferrari they call Testa Rossa?
It isn’t testosterone—it’s redhead, you see.
That dream-busting, glass-empty woman—that’s me.
An apple called Irony would be crisp and sweet.
Groovy
An apple called Irony would be crisp and sweet.
But Janis was the only one I’ve heard
actually use the hippie word groovy.
Her records on vinyl were definitely that,
and though etymological listing I’ve checked
doesn’t describe the real groovy thing—
1from Old English (trench, furrow, something dug),
from Middle English (cave, pit, more at grave)—
we both know tongue is you, groove is me.
Groove is a slot, tongue a protrusion.
Tongue and groove is very fine joinery,
and, by the way, is also quite groovy.
Edge marries edge, needs no glue to agree.
A tongue and groove joint does not accept three.
1 from Wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/groove (erasure)
Dance with Me
A tongue and groove joint does not accept three.
I call you up from my young cousin’s wedding.
(But you’re on a photo shoot, you cannot join me.)
I wish you were here, I wish we could dance.
The music is great, a real rockin’ band.
(You’re working with that girl I can’t stand.)
Her name is so haute, it’s like a name brand.
When we worked together, it wasn’t so pretty,
my piece cut to captions for “Style in the City.”
Now I hear your favorite Stones’ song:
“Can’t you hear me knocking”—let’s sing along!
When I’m your assistant, the exposure’s all wrong
my ISO, my aperture and all that damn light.
I go back to the party. It’s gonna be a long night.
Jupiter’s Moons
I go back to the party. It’s gonna be a long night.
Oh it’s not like I never had someone else want me.
There’s at least one whose memory haunts me.
I’m seventeen and his head’s in my lap.
Don’t look for him; he’s not on a map.
Besides, it’s all bokeh, a beautiful blur.
Galileo saw four moons of Jupiter,
just like you with your backyard telescope.
In a film I once saw, a couple, married
(but evidently not to each other)
run away to a forest. The light is so lovely
as they forage for mushrooms. The light
is still lovely as they vomit and die.
There are seventy-nine moons in Jupiter’s sky.
Tongue and Groove
What do you think when she finds you there?
Don’t you know what the poor thing would tell you?
The mist in the barrel’s called angel’s share.
What’s soaked in the barrel’s the devil’s own cut.
(The distant is so far away, the far is so near.)
And it’s all bokeh, a beautiful blur.
Galileo saw four moons of Jupiter, but
now we know what it is to be lost—
your glass is half full, half empty is worse.
Ciao bella, you say as you air kiss another.
Pain in our backs and our knees an ecstatic ardor.
A tongue and groove joint accepts only two.
There are seventy-nine moons in Jupiter’s sky.
Come back to the party. It is a long night.
Diane K. Martin lives in western Sonoma County, California, where she is an online instructor of Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage for Editors for UC Berkeley Extension. Her poems have appeared in diode, American Poetry Review, Field, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Plume, Zyzzyva, and many other journals and anthologies. Her work has received a Pushcart Special Mention. Her first collection, Conjugated Visits, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published by Dream Horse Press. Her second book, Hue & Cry, was published by MadHat Press in March, 2020.