Mixed Greens (And a Blackbird)

Norma Perfect

Issue 1 * Fall 1999

With absolutely no apologies
To that . . . man.

Salad greens and I'm cooking
again; again the same routine
it seems to me--a blackbird
has lit outside my kitchen
window
to look and stare and
stare and look and mock
my every move. His eyes
are pin-holes, boring into my soul.

Poor daddy, alight outside
my window, making me look
again, again like these
mixed greens. He used
to make me come
into his room, daddy, black-
bird, while he was still in his under-
wear and climb down, down,
into his closet for his dirty,
old loafers. He said; he
said his back was bad, daddy,
blackbird, and couldn't bend. It smelled
like rancid
salad greens.