My Hair Defies Modernity
(with a nod to Emily)

uprooted from antiquity,
it dwells in possibility
dreaming of a vanity
it will not know –

its crowdedness unmeshing
requires scythes for threshing
to keep it from enmeshing
Corsican sheep.

No lover’s – palpation
no airborne – flotation
no this-world – mutation
for my frisee.

The Fall is Just a Cover-up

Ah, autumn, you lure painters without brushes,
hunters of papaya whip – elusive slivers  
in the piles of plain old orange orange;

lovers race to land on your mosaic
mounds, wrap themselves in crunch
diverting their attention from a dying green …

Dying.

Ah, autumn, while others stoop to tweak
your apple-pumpkin cheeks, I know
the acrid whiff of winter ferments inside

your breath: the smell of conked out mulch
and deadhead droppings – tents for stinkbugs
having unprotected sex …

Sex.

Ah, spring, will I survive to name you?

————

Maria Bonsanti is a non-literary translator for a humorless entity that would fire her if she ever dared sneak any wit into her work. So she turns to poetry to entertain others and satisfy her need to be heard. Additional results of her soul-sharing travail can be found in Literary Juice and Red Poppy Review. A lifelong New Yorker, Maria finds it easier to fly to Europe than to cross the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey.