Two Poems

Madonna Mends Her Own Heart

Colors jump from their wheel
brush her blue, yellow, red

She holds her torn heart
stitches wounds punched

by nails and sword
right cross left cross right

If hung, gilt-framed
on nursery walls

she would radiate agency
a message sweeter

than any honey-clad tale
that walks the Hundred Acre Wood

 

Sammeltassen

When I rinse her Sammeltassen,
fluted floral cups gentle in my hand,
Mimmie comes to mind,
as a girl too tattered to have gathered
such fine prizes for a dowry.

She wed her new-world love
empty-handed but happy as ever a bride
who straddled a threshold
with a hopeful load of Sammeltassen.

Only after her children grew
peace rooted in her mother's homeland
could the Queen Elizabeth sail her east
to acquire the cups plates saucers
her past had ransomed and my hands attend.