Many of the poems in Skirts and Slacks
have to do with different kinds of uncertainty.
And a lot of the poems came out of a period of my life
when things were disintegrating.
My marriage was disintegrating.
People were-- family and friends were dying.
I was very unstable.
And so, I'll read a few of those that
have to do with those things.
This is when my mother finally took ill,
about three, four years ago, she was
staying at my sister's house.
I was born and raised in South Philadelphia,
and everybody in my family is still in Philadelphia.
My sister lives in the northeast,
which is simply a slightly more upscale version of South
Philadelphia.
The old red brick row homes, you know,
where the first thing you do if you move into such a house is
you take a loan so that you can finish your basement.
[LAUGHTER]
And my mother, there was nothing the hospice could do with her,
so she was getting hospice care in the basement of my sister's
house.
And I had a cot next to my mother's bed.
So I spent the days there until finally I
couldn't take it anymore.
So I got out.
I just got out.
I had to get out.
Go somewhere.
Go for a walk or whatever.
So I ended up in a bar.
And there was a snowstorm going on, a really bad snowstorm.
And this poem comes out of that.
It's in two parts.
The title of the poem is, "Cheap Gold Flats."
And the first part is, "Philly Babylon".
"The bartender, tossing cans carton-to-cooler,
hand-to-hand, with silky mortal ease,
while the 4 PM beer and shot standees
study the voiceless TV above our heads.
The worst and longest storm on record.
Ice works, canal, the pavements, power lines
down, cars pillowed helpless in the snow.
Bus fumes vulcanize the twilight's 911 sirens.
Enter Hotspur with alarums.
Enter Hazel, touching my elbow at the bar.
My staticky daily news breaks in the drift.
What's my horoscope say today, honey?
Dear Hazel, dear Pisces, don't be hurt.
Leave me alone a while.
My mother's dying.
I've been beside her bed for several days.
Today she had an extremer monkey look, her forehead shrunk down
to the bucky jaw.
And when she looks above her head,
she groans to see whatever it is she sees.
So here, take my paper.
Go home.
Forgive me."
This is the second part, Finished Basement.
"Tonight's big question, what will she be laid out in?
Disco tracks jump inside the paneling.
Rita loved to dance, and so do I. The sisters,
Rachel and Jeanette, and nieces coming straight from work,
shout across her bed, voicing with our faithful music
in the walls.
Charm bracelet, definitely.
The one she hardly wore.
And cheap gold flats that made her look young and men
look twice.
Yackety-yak.
The unconscious bone doesn't miss a thing we say.
It's used up flesh, helpless on the pillow.
Later, alone with her, the only noise near me
is this new rattle in her throat.
I hear it behind me, too.
The disposal upstairs, a drainpipe clearing,
whatever it is, I feel it coming closer to finger my hair
and stroke my neck."