The Hawk Queen Bed 8:11am
The Jay boasts The Song
of My Growing Up
in Valley Cottage, New York
where I played in woods
behind My House
& zoomed up a hill
from The Bus
after school
The Hawk Queen Bed 9:25am
My Brother’s Room
on McNutt Island
was paneled in knotty pine
stained an olive green
wherein He saw
knots shaped like Lurid Faces
& crossed Them over
with masking tape
The Hawk Deck 1:52pm
I stood bent in My Shower
& the milky foam
breathed across My Chest
& poured in streams
from My Two Breasts
like The Mother Wolf
in My Parents’ Nest
The Hawk Queen Bed 3:36pm
I met A Girl once
out by a pool
She had an assignment
to colour robin’s egg blue
in Her Colouring Book
I was told She lived
institutionalized
My Mother
didn’t approve
Listening to Future Islands 8:25pm
One night
an eternity ago
when I was young with My Brother
alive, yet within the walls
of Our Psychiatric Unit
He gave Me a white carnation
& a red rose & said
I was The Rose — I asked Him
to join Me in the morning
in My Pink Bedspread-ed Room
to make the announcement
to Our tall psychiatrist:
as I took Howard’s hand
I pronounced to Dr Chandler
“We are The Second Coming of Christ”
and he, that very tall man
with the booming voice
walked out
The Hawk Kitchen Outpost 5:05pm
I am living every woman’s dream
with 2 handsome husbands
& a lover in the wings —
I can make bread pudding
to save the birds from My Cooking
I can sit in My Grandmother’s Wrought Iron Chair
to look at The Sea,
My Pristine Blue Horizon
& remember what She said when I was a child:
“Someday Joge, You are going to make some man
very happy”
June 18, 2015 The Hawk Kitchen Outpost 7:52pm
abandoned on shore
sandy pink sucky thing — dropped
detritus of youth
The Tomato-coloured Couch 4:35pm
She was My Little Girl
My Masterpiece of Perfection
The Adorable Child
I have only in photographs
separated from Me
while I was ill
NOW — She is off
from Miami Beach
to British Columbia
leaving another heart
The Hawk West Desk Window 7:48pm
There Shimmers A Silver Sky
to thank Me for My smallest
of tasks — a sewing job
on My Husband’s pants
and the careful look
Eye took — lingeringly
at My Grandmother’s
needle book
with a yellow cover
& eight red wool pages
enclosed with a hand made clasp
to go inside
My Strawberry Painted
Sewing Box
The Hawk Kitchen Outpost 2:30pm
Oh if I had ever rode
inside a big yellow school bus
along the pristine coast
of Cape Sable Island
how much knowledge would
I have gathered?
Would I have married
a lobster fisherman
& had Five Children
all different
from My Own?
Would I have watched
Them board the bus
seeking its way through
the scrub spruce
beside the open ocean
turning to My Kitchen
& perhaps to My Pen?
Joanna Gilman Hyde 