Archive
Wakeful
A good suburban mom takes her four kits to scout.
She’s den mother of the Coyote Patrol.
They spill out into new spring’s almost balmy night,
drift towards the tract homes.
I fear for the raspy pug next door.
For once, he’s not barking like a metronome.
He is business-like, brief,
getting the memo out. Then stops.
The patrol made no meal there, I think.
No shriek, no maniacal coyote laughter,
only my husband’s light rapid breathing.
I listen as he dreams, my ear to his.
Karen Greenbaum-Maya, retired clinical psychologist, former German Lit. major, and Pushcart nominee, no longer lives for Art, but still. No one believes she is a California native. She started writing when she was nine. Since 2007, more than 80 poems have appeared in many publications, including Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Lilliput Review, Word Gumbo, The Prose Poem Project, Centrifugal Eye, Convergence and dotdotdash. Her second chapbook, Burrowing Song, is in press with Kattywompus. Links to her photos and poems online may be found at her blog, Clouds Like Mountains.
Homage to Weston
Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Claremont, California. Her poems and photos have appeared in numerous journals in print and online.
The Babinski
Monitors grind, and light from nowhere
comes soft as the sole of my aunt’s foot
somehow cleared of spur and callus
My aunt’s daughter strokes her hand, calls her name,
the blurred Rs of childhood returning
as she tries to override the bled-out brain
The nurse hisses don’t agitate the patient, chivies us out,
but my clinical thumbnail has already creased her sole
and got no answer. First-year, assessment of reflex:
if the toes don’t curl, well…
After thinking hard about this theme, Karen Greenbaum-Maya has decided to be quiet. This is not at all like her.
Fashionista
I’m dazzling fashion baby, fashion whore.
Corsets hide my emblem, my tattoo,
a mirrored magpie. It will be on show
as fashionistas lurch in gladiators.
A magpie’s eye lets me accessorize.
I love the sequins, have the gift of bling.
My breasts get seasonal repackaging
(the plumed god requires sacrifices).
I die for sparkly zippers on ripped denim.
What else is there to love in the time of cholera,
but Miu-Miu’s bondage bows, of tulle in silver,
the must-have bliss-dream in her store, a gem?
I’m all about the Look, finding the Look,
how I look in the mirror, seeking what I seek.
Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Claremont, California. She started writing when she was 9, and majored in German Lit so that she could read poetry for credit. She is yet another cat-loving feminist anti-war grammar prescriptionist for solar power. Her poems and photos have appeared in O Tempora!, Superficial Flesh [PDF], the San Diego City Works Press 2008 anthology Hunger and Thirst, New Verse News, The Dirty Napkin, Lilliput Review, Umbrella, Poemeleon and Off the Coast. She was nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize.
The Burrowing Song
A song burrowed into a woman’s head. It got in when someone said, “Oh, that’s just dandy.” C&H, C&H, Mommy uses it to bake her cakes. She makes the greatest cookies cakes and candy — they’re dan-dan-dandy! When the woman was in her bed, she could hear it upstairs.
C&H, C&H, Mommy uses it to bake her cakes. The woman called a pest control service, the one with the man dressed like an undertaker and carrying a big heavy mallet. She asked them to kill the song. It needs to be fed, they said, don’t you have some cookies, cakes or candy? “Oh, that’s just dandy,” the woman told them, and then she wept. Her blood pressure went up, so her GP prescribed meds. The song still played, only now in a chromatic scale, like Bach gone inbred.
Finally, the woman packed up her red Keds and left the house. The song had become part of the plumbing and stayed behind. Cool, she thought, at last I’ve got the damned thing balked. Who is the coolest guy who is what am? Fast-talking slow-walking good-looking Mohair Sam.
Now she has a safe tune and always carries it with her. If she sings it silently, the safe tune can drive away a burrowing song.
Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Claremont, California. In another life, she majored in German Lit, where she read poetry for college credit. She was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart. Her safe song has been on the job for more than fifteen years.
qarrtsiluni 