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The Poetry of Kay Meier
Song for My Father
Arms around me, he positions my fingers
on the five iron, on the steering wheel.
He sits by the sick bed, reads "Annabelle Lee."
He attends operations, graduations.
I see him in the back of the church
as I make my wedding vows, but
his shoulders disappear into a cab,
and I'm waving goodbye
to the wind.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Together
You teach me to shift
on your uncle’s ‘37 Chevy
stuffing coming out of
seat cushions.
Winter mornings, you stagger out,
start two cars in an icy driveway, dig us out of six- foot
drifts
The “Cloverleaf” five
steps down from the street
beer soaked linoleum,
its broken booth where you proposed
How we laughed at the
windy beach bar in Cayman
Cuervo Gold Margaritas
for lunch
How you measure
Martinis with sure hands
Partying so much I have
to quit my job
The dress you buy me
that falls off my shoulders
Motels where our other
selves make love
Fights that travel the
house, end in the waterbed
Sunday nights before
work
All this, more waiting
for us
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Night Rooms
She remembers the room,
not the man:
brown threadbare
carpet, window facing
a brick wall.
Concentrate on water:
roaring, dripping;
ignore embedded dirt
in chipped tile, hands
tearing
like claws, sucking
lips, her bruised breast.
Move quickly on down
the corridor
to jasmine air, open
balcony falling into sea,
dance music against
surf,
naked tangle on pink
sheets, hot
sandy pink against her back.
They find a crushed
lizard in bed,
laugh about it.
Linger here, pause
before another door:
white ruffles, maple
bedpost, shining wood floor,
gauze nightgown gently
lifted,
folded, bubbles cold in
a glass.
She drinks leaves of
gold.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Hotel Palmilla
Imagine a beautiful
woman on the veranda
overhanging a cliff.
Below, waves foam on rocks.
It is August, 120
degrees.
The hot wind presses
her gown into the hollows of her body.
She leans over a
railing of white lace
to glimpse her lover's
boat,
his catch glinting in
the late sun.
She dreams he ascends
the stairs
to lead her in a wild,
Latin dance,
to press her back hard
against
the glittering blue and
white floor.
Instead the surf
splinters
his boat upon a bed of
rock.
She falls for the
stranger
who appears at his
funeral.
Look! She paces now on
the veranda over the sea.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lemons
Stuffing pokes out of the seats in your
uncle’s ‘37 Chevy, a lipstick smear on its ceiling. The car dies in the
middle of rush hour. Sixty bucks towing. The clutch on the green Jeep
requires a superhuman leg. When we buy the Dodge, we don’t notice a
permeating ammonia odor. The Pontiac’s side door rattles a bit before it
falls off.
We become experts at selling and lying: the Volvo that was
never right after you slammed it into a parking bar, an egg shell “442 “
that skids in rain, a Seville even the dealer can’t fix. We also forget
to mention the Bronco’s U-joint that failed on a mountain ledge.
Even though you promise each new car will
last ten years, I know their days are numbered. It will either roll on
the highway, sway like a flag above fifty or slam into a slow moving
semi. Whatever the defect, it will be too expensive to fix.
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About the
Author
Kay
lived in Chicago for most of her adult life, but she and her husband
traveled extensively through-out the world.
From
1989 through 1996, Kay edited Rhino. In 2001, she won the July
poetry contest for Phoenix Downtown. Some of her poems have
appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, Karamu, Oyez
Review, Passages North, Slipstream, Snake River Press, Sow’s Ear, Slant,
Spoon River Quarterly, The Sun, and Whiskey Island.
Her
first book is Rehearsal. Her poetry is collected in a 2004
anthology entitled Sonoran Mirage. Kay’s great, great, great,
great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother is Anne Hutchinson.
Kay
Meier passed away in October 2007 and her poetry will be with us
forever.
We miss you Kay!
Sonoran Mirage
with contributing author
Kay Meier
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