Frida

Spitting out her beauty and disgust,
She jiggled ghosts and skeletons,
Emptied blood and I was there.
I cleaned up her mess,
I fed her dog and I made her bed.
I watered the garden by the pyramid
And it blossomed.

In life or death, I must see her again.
She’s just like me;
God and the devil
Wrapped up in one tamale.

                                 Jack Wilson
                 Rome in a Day

Rome sits on its seven haunches
And the pines, with fountains in their branches,
Old road markers in the Appian sun,
Are stolid, green and well run.
A conservative morning begins with dawn
And makes its logical way as a pawn
Is moved one square at a time
To Noon. It seems all right, but I'm
Conscious of a skip in my heartbeat,
And the day pops like corn in the heat
Of a sudden three o'clock. The wrench
Of time ticks in my ears. I hunch
My watch into a shadow to hide
It's face from the white glare. Inside,
The gold hands turn green and catch
On the number six. I light a match
To see if they will stick there
As the fountains, with pines in their sprays, share
Their fate, dwindle and dry in the light
And Rome gets marching into the night.

                                            Jack Wilson
3-27-05
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                   Medical Exam

Two soldiers, one all white, one all red,
Guard the north wall of the cubed room.
Squat, each with a pedal
To open the lids hands-free.
Fourteen inches square, fifteen high,
Steel with polished mechanisms,
Spare, utilitarian,
Made in Switzerland.

Plastic liner bags skirt the tops,
Peek from the edges of the covers
Like play-filled children unready for sleep.
The sentinels neither bark nor rattle.
They stand so white and so red
Keeping all predators at bay.

                           Jack Wilson
                    Clinic

Like the top of a great grey whale
Or a cartoon snake resting
On a tropical branch,
Like a section of escalator rail,
A mitten for handling radioactive
Pellets or a bent, deflated
Pontoon,
The arm of this institutional chair
Invests the waiting room with
Ponderous anonymity as
Patients shift their gazes and fuss
With magazines no one will read and
Look longingly at the door which
Opens frequently for one-at-a-time, and – finally,
Me.

Jack Wilson