Portable Lover

                                                (From the doll “Mr. Wonderful”)

— Mary Lou Taylor

A brown paper-wrapped package
came. No return address. Inside,
a little man with the whitest, evenest teeth,
a Schwarzenegger smile, wide muscled arms.
One hand held a red rose.

Press me here, his belt buckle reads.
How about a big kiss?
She picks him up, darea
to squeeze him. His body
responds to her touch
like a plush pillow’s would.

Let’s just lie in bed and talk all night.
Words that mkee her fingers tingle. At last
a man who knows what she wants.

You’re perfect just the way you are.
I wouldn’t change one thing. Yes.
She fingers his belt buckle one more time,
wants to run her hands through his plastic hair,
gaze into those blank blue eyes.

I could carry him in my pocket, bring him
out whenever I pleased, hold him
In the palm of my hand.

When I First Touched Ernie’s Moon Rock

— Mary Lou Taylor

We were at a party.
Eighth grade reunion.
Ernie was married to Pat.
I had married Jack. The party
was at Hector’s. We all brought food.

Ernie, Hector, Ben and Paul
let Jack join the group. Because
he was quiet. And listened.
We talked about eyelashes,
Charismatic Christianity, glossolalia,
the last too much for Jack.

He was out on the porch for a breath
of air when Ernie brought out a rock
from the moon. He passed it around.
All of us held it tight, felt its roughness,
its battered surface.

Billions of years old, Ernie told us.
Gathered on one of the Apollo missions,
considered priceless, smuggled out
in the lab coat he wore. But the rest of us
weren’t impressed. Looked like any old rock.

Moon rocks should be stored in nitrogen
to keep them moisture-free. We’d had
wine and beer and started to toss the rock
from hand to hand, all of us laughing.

I wonder what happened to that fragment
taken off the moon’s surface. Ernie
is gone now, setting himself on fire
in a mental ward. Hector visited him often.
I’ve lost track of Pat.

A Visit to Café de Flore

— Mary Lou Taylor

I couldn’t get enough of those translated French novels.
Particularly about Paris. I was thirteen, and France meant
romance. When I grew up, I planned to sit at one of those cafes
Hemingway frequented, sipping a vin blanc on the Left Bank.

I prepared, taking French. Years later we took a Four Capitals tour.
Paris at last! Saw Notre Dame, the Tuileries, came nowhere near
Saint-Germain-des-Pres and all those plush drinking places I hungered
for, those places with savoir-faire and history. The last time I saw

Paris, we stayed on the Left Bank, combed the bookinistes for picture
books, tried some Chateauneufdu-Pape courtesy of an Irishman we sat
next to, uncovered the first Impressionist work ever painted, by Monet,
in a private museum, and met friends on the Île de la Cité for dinner.

At last our plans took us to my lifetime destination. Admiring the Art Deco
interior of red seats, dark wood and mirrors, we chose to sit outside under
a huge striped umbrella. Our own table was small, fine for the two of us.
Our waiter, dressed in a black vest, stiff collar and bow tie, appeared.

I ordered a Kir Royale, and while we waited, I pictured Camus and Picasso
or Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre sharing our umbrella. Our drinks
arrived. Just as I took my first sip, savoring the creme de cassis, something
on the pavement beneath us moved. A brown figure darted across my foot.

Its long tail curved over my shoe top. It couldn’t be. It was. A rat.

Prisms

— Mary Lou Taylor

She feels the burn of her son’s hand on her shoulder
long after he has gone. Cutting a marriage
to the quick, a clean-scissored severance.

He holds up his ring finger, empty
since that morning, a half-circle still pale
against the brown of his skin.

Her son has left the chair he pulled toward her,
dazzling facets of color, reflected off the crystal
on the table, pinned like a medal’s grosgrain stripes

to his lapel as he stands. A shining crown worn
on his head marks him as he leans toward her,
moving with him as he takes her hand in his.

After her son leaves, colors still splash against the ceiling,
glow in a violet green yellow red smear on the mantel.
Rainbows everywhere. Fitting to see rainbows.

An Appreciation of Madness

— Mary Lou Taylor

Oxen Hill, Maryland, left me depressed.

We moved into an upstairs one-bedroom apartment,
unfurnished, when Jack reported for duty
at Andrews Air Force Base.  Lucky us, they all said.

A bed and a card table with four chairs I’d redeemed
with green stamps.  Along with a recliner, all
the furniture we owned.

From the building next door a shaft of light
through the window kept me awake, dust motes
dancing,  I counted them like sheep.

A glass of water would help.  I walked into the kitchen,
turned on the light, and a legion of cockroaches
scattered across the linoleum floor, tan backs

disappearing into cracks and crannies.  It took me
a day to find their real home, the step-on canister
in the corner holding trash.  I scrubbed for hours.

Downstairs our landlord had a cerebral palsied child.

The girl would sit in her chair on the porch for the day.
I seldom heard her complain, but I heard her father often,
scolding her, berating her.  Once he twisted her arm.

I never saw the mother talk to her daughter.
I may have been the only one
who ever smiled at that crippled child.

St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Insane.

Across our back fence its red brick tower.
The hospital covered a huge area, even had
a cemetery.   Famous for its skill at lobotomies,

the campus collected brains, preserved them in formaldehyde.
And Ezra Pound was a patient.  He left with his brain
intact, though some doubted that was so.

How I loved “The River-Merchant’s Wife.”  If a madman
composed this poem, I longed to emulate him.  I so admired
the hurt of paired butterflies, her dust mingled with his,

the monkeys’ sorrowful noises.  Sometimes I heard cries
coming from the lighted buildings.  Sometimes I imagined
Pound at a writing desk and fancied I would be the one

“to come out to meet you” as far as Cho-fu-Sa.