THREE POEMS
By Phil Rice
THE SLUMBERING D.T.'S
You rattle my dreams,
your ebony skirt
swirling from corner
to dusky corner,
tossing touchless
kisses in time
with the beat
of your stripless
tease;
unloosed,
you prance past
my threshold,
snapping the end
of a silken scarf
in your wake;
drained,
I inhale
the warm scent
of your
pall-wrapped
memory
and shiver
beneath
the sweat-
dampened
sheets;
empty,
mine is
a cold,
nervous,
waking.
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THE MATHEMATICS OF KISSING DURING LUNCH PERIOD
The slide rule grinds and slips, As the adding takes a turn; She starts to move her hips, As my heart begins to burn.
The sum is almost up, The equation's boiling hot; Sub-fractioning is near: We’ll meet in the parking lot.
And so it was that I learned, When the final grades came due, That the number I coaxed, Was the square-cubed pi of two.
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THE POCKET PHOTO
(for Christi Lyn)
There’s a picture in my wallet
Where angelic cries
Dangle the moon and
Teach the sun to shine;
We danced
and twirled, and giggled,
to the songs of Edmunds
and the Q;
we played on swings and slides,
and sat on moss-covered rocks,
eating Krystals from a bag;
There’s a picture in my wallet
Where a hand clasps mine,
Pulling my dragging feet
Along a stumbling path;
I tied your shoes
in a single loop,
as you hummed a pretty song
from a book we’d read
the night before;
the stories stayed
in your head, waiting
to tell them again,
and again;
There’s a picture in my wallet
Where giggles rise and smile,
Perpetually filling my heart
With warm and milky breath;
We shopped at Big Lots,
And bought a plastic broom and mop;
you played and played
and cried when
you had to put them away--
still makes me cry today.
There’s a picture in my wallet
Where life resides gently,
Feeding my troubled soul
With pure love unasked.
END
Phil Rice currently lives in Melrose, Florida, with his son Paul and their dog Fauna. His daughter Christi lives down the road a piece in Gainesville where she is a student at the University of Florida.
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