A Crone's Advice to a Young Bride
(Do you suppose she's heard of the Anunnaki Astronauts?) For G.K.J.

"Beware your juices, and the male's, to boot,"
the crone observed. She spoke with clear-eyed pain.
"It's hormones, yours and his, that are the root
of issues you will (he won't) entertain.
They're not just plumbing. They entrain the brain
you do not share. He's juiced for gold and sex,
while you ask 'Next?' at his brain's 'disconnects'."

Nowhere to Plant the Feet

We learned, mid-Eighteen-hundreds, to attach
a dashboard to the front of newer surreys
so water, mud, snow, ice and wads of thatch
and horse manure dashed it, not us. What? Worries?
In Sunday-best, we'd all drive off to face
our preacher's god and get our week's remorse.
It was, besides, a board our feet could brace
against when reining in a bolting horse.

Today the dashboard's like an alter-top
behind two hundred horses -- bric-a-brac
of patron saints and maps and snacks which flop
through my right hand, while in my left I yak
into a cellphone as I hold the wheel
with my left knee . . . uncertain what I feel.

Leland Jamieson lives and writes in East Hampton, Connecticut, USA. Recent and forthcoming work appears in numerous print and Internet magazines. His first book, 21st Century Bread: Poems, can be previewed and is available at Lulu.

Email: Leland Jamieson

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