My gone mother on Mars

My gone mother on Mars
Searching for signs of life
Searching for her lungs

She has 1950s curlers in her hair
Smoking 2-3 cigarettes

Mom is right and she is wrong
Lonely in her skin

She dances on her peg leg
Spins on the never-healing stump

Her arm rises in the air
It's just my funny brain tumor
She says

In a crater she finds remnants of Yiddish
Fragments of a Russian lullaby

Her hands are bigger than mine
Knuckles knobbier

She visits me in Mexico, in Cuba

To keep me from floating away
She holds my foot

Martian booby traps everywhere

She has only six months to live
forever

How will she survive her life
On the Red White and Blue Planet?

                                         -- New York, March 28, 2011

The cast of characters


“The cast of characters includes a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a cheerleading peanut and a banana.” – Cartoon Network press release about the debut of The Amazing World of Gumball, March 17, 2011

For the life of me
Here I stand
Avenue of the Americas
Central Park South
Looking up
At San Martin's statue
Libertador de Argentina, Chile y Peru

The cast of characters

Surely I am the only one in the world
Who at 10:15 in the morning
On this very day
Standing in San Martin’s shadow
Is taken into custody
By this joyful recollection:

Street musicians in Buenos Aires
In their 70s, maybe older
Worse for wear, hungover and drenched
In the Plaza de Mayo

The happiest and freest 4 humans alive

I walk into the park
I embrace
One by one
The Tyrannosaurus Rex
The cheerleading peanut
And the banana

What a cast of characters!
                                          -- New York, March 23, 2011