August Poems

Perhaps a new direction for Ramona for those of you who know her---I had intended to be funnier and have more puns...like usual...

Grocery List

It’s more than the possibility of oranges and arugula,
the promise of endives, someone to hold.
Mystery is the banana ripening, the suggestion
of peeling, the melon ready to be cut, the juice
of a day running down your chin. It’s the sizzle
of letters, the garlic hiss of the pen as Ramona composes.
It’s not a list, it’s a lifestyle, a hieroglyphic
of recipes, raspberries born between your teeth,
the surprises she hides in fresh baked brownies
so you’ll remember her.

The chakra of potatoes sing to her in sleep so she writes
it down on scratch paper. It’s as if the foods are calling
her, not that she needs them, but they need her.
There’s a prophecy in her pantry.

She goes to open mics and reads her produce of poetry,
each item a secret, a kernel of memory, of strawberry
picking late summer, taste of childhood, of love,
the onions of possibility, layers and layers to peel,
a tear from long ago, something you thought
already shed. Hopes and idiosyncrasies to husk
and shuck off.

She’s a firm believer in the mantra: you are
what you eat. She breathes peanuts into the microphone
and it’s grade school lunches and baseball, homerun
of meatless protein, Thailand and Reese’s Cups.
A lemon is a door back to that stand where you saved
enough for your first dream, vinaigrette
of something foreign and familiar, kiss of sun,
small enough to hold in the heft of your hand.
In another time and place you’d be Rosemary,
the woman who will bake bread in the mornings
and sing when it rains.