SUSHI SUZIE

red cherry drop
of poison smile
slash of black
slant-luster glance
under swallow-wing
brows

grace bows
elegance trades
icy jade-blossom
bonsai-twists a kiss
sayonara
credit card-goodbye

Manuela Cardiga

NEVERMIND

i shape my face
to the expected farse
pin charm in place
like some dowager
pinning a shawl to cover
slips and stains
of wasted time

the pin strikes deep
through weave and skin
nevermind! i cry
with a dizzy smile
the yellow stain
of disappointment
shows up less;

so let me bleed
bright rubies instead.


Manuela Cardiga

VODKA-ORANGE ON THE ROCKS

love is water-sweet
to the thirsty

love is bitter-salt
remembrance
in the desert
of absence

Manuela Cardiga

BEIJING DUCK WITH HOISIN SAUCE

I close my eyes
and home-sick geese
stitch their desire
across the skies

I close my eyes
and fleet-winged,
love dies.

Manuela Cardiga

CATCHING THE MOON
PLAYING THE FOOL

there is a bucket
with a hole in it
the shape and size
of the moon

i fished for that moon
in the well of Urd
and lost a dream
snubbed a toe
tore a scheme

there is a heart
with a hole in it
whole and broke
and blood and stone

there is a hole
and the light
of the moon
bleeds out

there is a pin-hole
and the bucket drips
drips the last drop:
no hope.


Manuela Cardiga

Tigger and Thoreau: Same-same...

ME: "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too". That's the philosophy book for me. Just because something is simple doesn't make it's simplistic.

IVAN: Simplicity, magnanimity and trust: Thoreau.

ME: Too intellectual for me, this guy. I dig Tigger

IVAN: Which guy?

ME: Thoreau.

IVAN: No he ain't!

ME: Ye he is! Is he orange and does he bounce on his tushie???

IVAN: He is a tiger in man-clothes!

ME: So....Thoreau is really Tigger in disguise?

IVAN: Yep

ME: Never read Thoreau. Tell me about him.

IVAN: Ah! Thoreau! He was a sensualist and an observer deluxe, and his language is poetic. He wrote for himself.

ME: I like him already.

IVAN: Yep, you gonna love him. Very practical guy, he could see, he was awake.

ME: Was he happy?

IVAN: Well, he was a cohort of Emerson's. Lived in Emerson's garden.

ME: Those da dudes that waffled on about autumn leaves and boinked women with long flowing tresses from them Pre-Raphaelite paintings?

IVAN: Yep.

ME: Them were happy dudes, then. That was before it was fashionable to be artistically tortured by genius and commit suicide by booze and drugs.

IVAN: Absolutely.

ME: Cool! So, Tigger and Thoreau...Same-same...Fancy that!


from Conversations with Ivan Shapiro

Between the continuation of another species and the survival of a single human child, I pick the child.