Digestive Disorder
Mother didn’t cook with love, though taste wasn’t the issue.
If the six of us were gathered, father always proved unable
to get through a meal without detonating.
I’d sit with lump in throat, trying to chew, remember how to swallow.
Now I can eat with gusto, invite friends over to sit around my table
sharing good food, laughing.
But no wonder the cancer grew inside my gut. Surgery on tumor
in colon, a dramatic exorcism. Chemo killed the rest of him.
Where We Lived
Turpentine vapors float, burn.
Televisions disassembled.
Smell of paint that never dries.
Radio parts strewn about.
Drone of an electric drill.
Micky has facilitated a monthly poetry evening at the Unitarian Congregation in Kingston, New York. She has been a featured reader at several venues locally, in NYC and Long Island, and her work has been read on WKZE radio. Her poems have been/will be published in Chronogram, Home Planet News, the Codhill Press anthology of Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, the Woodstock Poetry Society anthology Lifeblood, and the Arts Society of Kingston chapbook 25