Threatens to Bloom

Threatens to Bloom


Dressed in black
skin-tight jeans
and a matching black turtleneck

Karen taught
in a solemn atmosphere
private students
her best
severe academic French
at a kitchen table as big around as the one
that seated King Arthur's knights in his court at Camelot.

Mixing white skin-tight jeans
and a knitted black turtleneck,
or a knitted white turtleneck
with a pair of black skin-tight jeans,

Karen taught academic French
to her son and daughter and closest friend
in the upscale neighborhood's
only son,
who was Teacher's Pet
at the kitchen table of massive size
she presided over
like Arthur ruling his knights in Camelot.

*                *                  *

Standing next to a manager, waiting for ice to fall;
water collects on stainless steel, in corners, along sides.

*                  *                  *

Une Grande Dame who kept watch
over our cultural heritage, Karen invited her roommate
from when she was living in Paris,
to attend the Sorbonne,
Françoise,
to her house for a month:
petite, young, with short pixie-cut hair,
her full-bosomed chest thrust
carelessly forward to rest on the table,
like those were her ante, and meant she was in.

*                  *                  *

To her son and daughter
the neighbor's boy
interloped, encouraged

their mother's moods
and her harebrained scheme
for a private army

to keep her faith
and preserve the culture.
The neighbor's son

was the ideal model
for Karen's knight,
so was much despised.

*                  *                  *

I can't eat this
beautiful hothouse tomato.
I imagine
Karen arranging it
cut into slices and salted and
fanned in an arc
on a plate with an omelet
folded in thirds.

*                  *                  *

Back-lit by late afternoon
after-school
light,
Françoise tugs the low-plunging top button
clasping the shirtwaisted neckline
that augers a wedge through her sternum,
conveying up secrets of feminine essence on helical planes
of progressively difficult French grammar,
while she leans on the table and fondles the disc of her button.

*                  *                  *

Karen taught
tense and mood.
Karen taught
gendered nouns
must agree with verbs.
Karen taught us to order words.