98poems/walking

WALKING DEL DIOS

The yellow house at Quince had a good garden that year – early. I envied it on our Saturday walks. Too hot for me to want to work outside.

At her yard sale I bought a miniature linen-covered dress form used in stores to display jewelry. And pasted to its belly a two-inch scene I had cut out from a magazine. A cozy room with a fireplace where some woman sewed, a dress form with a tape measure draped around its neck standing in front of a winter window. I titled it “Woman Giving Birth To Herself.”

The lady at Quince had a full-figure mannequin in her garden. A head or two on sticks marked the rows. An arm sprouted up from the zucchini.

Her house was a gangly thing close to the street with a eucalyptus garland wrapped around it, like a woman wearing pearls.

7/11/98