songanddancegirl

Ghost Ranch

he wears an expensive houndstooth jacket  great shoes

he is scion  +dropdead handsome  scion to dynasty  of

horsethieves  bootleg +bookies   he is horsey too    but not Lauren

she is in black   Rita-esq   would never wear black in life

thought she killed her mother  when poet was 5   Freda in

black cardi at her mother’s deathbed  very superstitious    writings on the wall

her mother’s stroke in a rocking chair  eyes rolled back

oh the horror  poet the small witness   a cousin  who just

died at 97   in Alaska   slapped Rita hard  across the face

these are not their stories anymore  +they are not mine

so why drag ’em around   like filthy rags?   why?  

nature of the fate beast  eh

she wears black regularly now  turtlenecks  slim cropped

trousers  long brown hair   take the ribbon from your hair

rail thin   spirited

she is not my mother anymore  recently freed from bondage

to  children  vomitous-dogs  rake husband   she is fearless

men line up

she flirts brazenly  uses her whip on an as needed basis  while

down here i learn to be motherless   +free of her dependency   not easy

now both on brand new trajectories   glory  glory   Hallelujah! 

will you know my name?  the one  you+Lee  Louis  Ella+Basie

gave to me   Lee  if it’s a girl let’s name her Aprill   the 2 ll’s

blinking  11:11  11:11  11:11    blue lilacs in your hair  i’d know you   anywhere

__

Winter 2025  ..blue lilacs your deathbed song  3:10 am  14/11/22..

There is a popular belief that making a wish when

the clock shows 11:11 is a powerful time for

manifestation 

Teddy & Alvin & the be-pimpled Giant

Alvin was wiry  prison-wiry  how would i have known this

at 9?  there is a leftover danger about some people  a smell

mustyripe   +deadeyed

Father brought him home from the racetrack   how did he

miss that?  Alvin slept in our basement  +could easily have

murdered our family    or molested me

i was often alone with him  as he pumped iron  halfnaked

did you have such visitors  at 9?  then there was Teddy  an

older man  without teeth  quite sweet  he lived in the stalls

nuzzled up against steaming horses  he had the dignity of

a FisherKing   always smiling  +threadbare   i visited often in

said basement  left oreos  cold brisket  +the Diary of Anne Frank

you see Ted was quite lonely  he whispered sweet nothings as

i sat on his knee  english not his first language  all nods+arcane

handsignals    a munchkin vibe for sure

then there was the ravine  pure magic  with giants  a dead

grandfather  +one matricidal child maniac  now serving life

in the asylum next door    Jerry can you hear me?

the Giant lived in a burned-out shack  ungainly+pimpled  quite

Quasimodo  he visited me often  in the weewee hours  my screams

piercing suburban nights    oh he was a taskmaster alright!

swore me to secrecy

no doubt you had

Giant visitations

too

__

Winter  2025  …

will the real Aviva Oonroth please stand up?

i thought i would be a novelist  by now

but it’s just so hard to   make shit up

as my mentor David Donnell  aka Krispin

used to suggest

but Krisp  why make shit up  when my family

reads like a broadway play?  call me  Ishmael

Aviva

daughter of the creek

ravine  shetl  racetrack

ICU’s   circus  bestiary

daughter of the dust

__

..iv’e seen things better not to tell..

(Frank Stanford  poet  1948-1978)

Winter  2025  ..can i get a witness?..

the ubiquitous hearse..aka..kaddish the musical

Frank Stanford  1975  Archives & Ephemera 

i am actually not death-obsessed  what i am is  uber-alive  +this

is why   i flirt with the beast   so to understand   his mysteries

his glory

i expect

my ashes

will continue

to sing

just turn up the volume

come Spring  my name

in 5 languages

if you have watched the final breath  you are intimate with death

3 times the charm   now poet is pals with the Great Reap  who will

creep  over the bedsheets  +kiss her  on a  crepeycheek

(okay..enough with the rhyminmaudlin) 

this the most gentle

inhale/exhale

one will ever meet        

bye bye

the creek was full of tadpoles  later squished frogs on the driveway

(aprill  it’s about the frogs..)  but you didn’t really consider them dead

now flat  +quite beautiful   all black fluid +seeping

53 years later  you ride in the hearsemobile  of your fabulous mother

(not really dead either)  whose rings you wear  cautiously   oh the mystery    

she wore them better  her hands bigger   her heart pure laine  child

Saturday at the ballet  35 dancers deep  weeping +throwing themselves

through a gap in the curtain  blackabyss  when a 1960’s pristine hearse

glides onto the stage (!)   to Ravel’s  Kaddish  1914

your husband’s  ghost stitches  sing

holy radiation burns  aquiver

neither of you flinch   or seep

__

..an artist should carry his death like a priest his breviary..  

( Heinrich Boll  1917-1985  Nobel Prize winner ..dead at 67)

Fall 2025  ..memento mori  eh