Palm Springs Never Had It So Good

by Lucinda Sands

Sun-pinked, curly,
wearing leopard print skivvies,
slightly overweight for 40,
you danced and hummed
in the cabin kitchen
while some of us played
backgammon and others looked on
with ony slightly pruned egos
awaiting your eggs over easy,
Canadian bacon and Chock Full of Nuts.
On the veranda we gave ourselves over
to morning Bloody Marys and Pinacoladas,
the Eagles and Lou who sang arias
in the canyon below us.
Air solft and calm with desert dry,
cacti plump and content on terracotta sand,
the desert seemed to like us there.
You said, "Palm Springs never had it so good."
That night, a centrury ago it seemed,
you promised a future and I knew you were lying.
I played well just as a good friend or a close relative would;
just as you did when your wealthy uncle made false promises.
After that, you went missing like the confused gold miner
we'd only read about in our history books;
Parched and delusional, never having found his fortune,
he wandered the salt flats for weeks before stumbling
into a town where he thought no one knew him,
where they asked where he'd been all this time,
and he asked himself who he was.

Even

by Lucinda Sands

We had no choice.
It had to be even.
Everything given out just so:
Ounces of chocolate milk in tupperware cups
or turns with the one pink hula hoop,
the number of M&M's for six dirty hands
or wedges of apple pie from an undersized dented tin.
The clamor for more followed.
The stifled tears followed.
The too few minutes on Mom's tired lap followed
before she'd nudge one of us children
aside to make room for another.

A Shark Tale

By Lucinda Sands

We all loved you as Diamond George,
a grounded constant who fed our hangovers
every Sunday afternoon.
You were always loaded with stories,
loaded with cash, always loaded.
Yours was the best clam chowder out west,
and I wanted you to cook for me,
to have that half-cocked smile,
those chef’s hands attending only me.

The last time I saw you outside
that seaside café, with your feet bandaged
and resting on a canvas chair,
you convinced my young sons
that a shark had eaten your toes.
They believed your vivid brown eyes.
They believed your Bogart voice.
They believed the man I once knew.

But none of us could guess
what you knew then.
That you would be gone soon.
That the restless shark, forever hungry,
would take the rest of you
without a sound in your sleep.

How to Let Go of My Youngest Son

By Lucinda Sands

I hold his face in my hands
my palms fully on his cheeks
where his bones are most like mine.
And I see, really see beyond
those extraordinary khaki eyes.
They are still before impatience,
filled with the innocence of twenty-one.

I place a kiss, a blessing, on his cheek,
as if he were Homer’s Odysseus.
This, even though his journey
will take him barely six hours from here,
even though he has not yet learned to sail,
even though he can take a flight home.

I am humbled and proud,
not because he is a master potter
of sorts, but because he is a masterpiece
of humankind, because he has been my teacher
all along, even though this I not always knew,
even though I cannot remember a first lesson.

What I do recall, what I know,
is the scent of his hair, his toddler hands
as together we perused a fresh book.
And that he questioned what he saw
with naïve fingers and the words I read
with uncomplicated reaction.

Now, he questions doctrine, systems, principles.
I give him one more of many hugs,
and a half-smile before he goes,
knowing his return will be different
yet so much the same, knowing the lessons
will continue, knowing he knows
the harbor will remain open.

That Word

By Lucinda Sands

I half lie, edgy
on the side of one thigh
and look into you.
On my bed silence spreads,
trepidation sleeps.
Then that word saunters in
proud from outside,
dances on my lips
and kicks dust into the air.
You are still for too long.
I whisper, “I really do.”
Finally. You ask,
“does it bother you
that I don’t say it?”
Sometime later, I’m not sure when
perhaps an hour into next time
that word reappears
tiptoes across your face
and steals the air between us.

Beyond Bare Bone

By Lucinda Sands

I know that place in you
the splintered spirit
fractured and aloof,
the abandoned arteries
clogged with disappointment,
the pallid heart
weak and dissatisfied,
perhaps a misguided womb
left swollen yet empty.
I know that place in you
the precipice of thought
too slick to realize,
the gasping for air too thin,
the bitterness of bile
surging from the belly
and blood’s cold lessons
tainted with the past.
I know that place in you
where too much rests
behind hardened scars
behind fresh abrasions,
behind saturated memory
refusing to dry,
and nothing dies
but all passes on and on.
I know that place
behind the panic,
that seeps from midnight
and calls, and calls, and calls
into vacant spaces
and dares you one more time
to look beyond bare bone.

Creeping In

By Lucinda Sands

Open your back door just enough
to beckon late summer in
and some other something
may steal your inattention
creep into your heaving
your hope-filled chest
slither into your void extraordinaire
trespass on your upturned palms
your meditative pose.

Are you ready
for his tiptoe dance
through gleaming-like-pearls
chunks of egg shell
and bits of rainbow confetti
embedded in the Persian rug
you preened for far too many years?
Will he be stunned to find
what you never knew was there?
Surprised when he flips you upside down
pulls your pockets inside out
then disappointed beyond repair
to find nothing on empty?

And when he leaves before sunup
will he be willing to drop
a quarter of himself
(give or take a dime)
into the spare change jar
you hide behind the violet velvet sofa
with brilliant silk pillows
tossed on a bare floor
each time you prove your passion.