Coffeeshop Writer's Group - Poems: Peonies are Pollinated by Ants - Finding Heaven in Amy's Beauty Salon

The usual suspects were there. Carly Brown and Beatriz Moisset.

Carly read a wonderful poem about Bucks County Designer Homes & Gardens. Quite a feat turning it into a poem. Here are some of the houses on the website.

We told Carlana she must send the poem to the Designer House folks.

Beatriz read us one of her informative nature essays called "A Healthy Garden is a Buggy Garden." As you may know, ladybugs are our friends and destroy damaging aphids.

Donna Krause read a superb poem "Chelsea's Morning" about a woman who had an abusive childhood and took refuge at Donna's house. For Chelsea's b'day, Donna mailed her the poem at her home in Boulder, Colorada.

Jovon Belcher read another installment of his crime thriller "The Call." Well-wrin and suspenseful. I said it reminded me of the movie Scott and I watched last nite "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," the last film directed by the great Sidney Lumet.

Philip Seymour Hoffman certainly didn't mean to kill anyone, but things got out of hand. Now, I spose I'll have to watch everything he's ever been in like "Doubt." Just placed an online request at my library.

Linda was late since she was making last-minute changes to her story "The Kiss that Killed."

"You're just like me," I said to her when she got there. I was 15 minutes late.

In only a couple of pages, Linda successfully weaves an intriguing murder story where the killer - a woman named Ulrike - made a terrible mistake, showing once again that crime doesn't pay.''

This morning while making b'fast, I listened to Marty Moss-Coane interview PA gov. Tom Corbett about his drastic budget cuts. A few of his legislator friends ended up in prison for helping themselves to other people's money. He made a comment about it, not realizing it quite funny.

After Marty asked him a question, he would often say, "I'm not gonna get into this...." and then would indeed. He's used to saying No, him and his Republican cronies.

Just as he doesn't realize what he's doing to education and the welfare of the poor. Marty pointed out that a study showed that welfare fraud is quite uncommon, but Corbett is spending loads of the taxpayers' money in an attempt to catch this small minority.

Someone insisted on photograffing me - even tho I know what I look like.

Lemme grab my coffee, I said.

People think of the darnedest things when they're about to be photographed, right Bill?

When Carly left I gave her a hug and a kiss. She's going into AMH next Thursday for her pig valve operation. Call me, I said, and I'll come over.

I love visiting people at home!

As soon as my peony bush bloomed on the side of the house, I knew I must write about it and incorporate childhood memories.

PEONIES ARE POLLINATED BY ANTS

Rick Collins, my gardener, cut you down, thinking you were weeds, but you came up again, didn’t you, thinking you were beautiful and deserved a chance to delight the passersby.

I cut down two of your beautiful heads, a luscious deep pink, the bundle of petals like the overgrown hair of an afro.

Are you perhaps a flowery form of gap-toothed Angela Davis?

Your new home on my windowsill pleases you.

Not a single dropped petal,

I give you front-row placement,

next to the resurrected African violet,

"never give up hope" is the motto of

the dwellers on my windowsill.

Falling asleep last night

I heard the muted conversation

peony struck up with tall rosemary

She smells me and remembers her rocking-chair childhood.

The day they painted the front porch she

was out searching for four-leaf clovers hidden in the grass.

Pasted them in her scrapbook she keeps sixty years later

filed away with her baby teeth

and naked-girl match covers gotten from the milkman

heralding her own cover girl career.      

Her tussles with Gramma Lily are rarely forgotten

‘a smart girl like you should get an abortion’ Lil said

before they took her away, not for meanness

but for wandering the streets and

forgetting who she was.

After I awake and clean away the dishes

an ant crawls on the counter. I do what I must,

but am undecided when I sit on the porch steps

and watch a licorice-black one caught in a

spider-web, twisting like a motherfucker.

Ants pollinate peonies. 

*

As soon as I sat in the chair at Polished Beauty Salon, right next to Wawa, on York Road in Hatboro, PA, I knew I must write a poem about the place.

FINDING HEAVEN IN AMY’S BEAUTY SALON

dedicated to the real Amy: Kyeng Lee

Patting my thin aging hair

I step over the threshold

of another America.

Everything is white

walls

counters

porcelain skin of

the Korean women

who have come

for refinement

by their queen

Amy the First.

I am greeted

and given tea in a

floral cup

taken to my chair and

enrobed in capes and towels

to preserve my ageless body.

From my mirror I watch

a clique of women who

descended on our shores

famous for our opportunities

they laugh

they twitter

they trill

bowing before their queen

in silk trousers and tiny heels

Fingers massaging my hair

lull me into an angelic mood

eyes closed

I am nowhere

womb-like

nirvana

no cares have I

You may open eyes now, she says

I watch her black hair sway

as she wields the scissors

with the delicacy of the

attentive orchids on display,

holds my hair above my head

with reverence

and delight

A ceramic cross beams on the wall

I know for certain

I am preparing for eternity.

All of us

Christian and Jew

are getting groomed and pampered

for that special day we are taken up

a parasol descending

to lift us heavenward.

Amy makes it easy

Amy makes it natural

as natural as turning my

thin aging hair into

an auburn crown that fools

no one except my infant granddaughter

as I await my final hour.