for Dr. Carlos Hernandez, Professional Professor, Husbandpants
On the Occasion of our 4th Wedding Anniversary, AKA “Flowers and Fruit”
In Rego Park my love does dwell
Between the LIRR and Forest (Park)’s dell
Where loom the brick-faced cliffs and crags
(With balconies I’d give a tit to have)
Where bluejays bray on fire-escapes
And dog-shit sculptures form classic shapes
Near mallow blooming in the sidewalk cracks
(I have an app for flower facts)
Where dogwood, redbud, magnolia, and cherry plum
Flaunt their sex with hither-come–
(And, babe, they ain’t the only ones!
Roommate’s gone, let’s have some fun
We, too, have a horn to toot…
And cherries are your favorite fruit)
Inside our haven-hole, gorilla nest
Our office, restaurant, dance hall, place of rest
Our treehouse, burrow, library, and bower
(That little room where every day you shower
While I grow ranker by the hour
Rich with soil, ripe and fecund, sweetly sour
A fertile field ready for your plough–
Hey! You, me, and your plough make three: “paradise enow”)
Come cuddle close, my love, come coodle near
Thy Borg-black hearing aids in thine ear
Thy wayward curls a three-month thicket grown
Thy warm-knit slipper-socks with pandas sewn
Dessert for dinner renders dinner moot
(And cherries are your favorite fruit)
On weekdays sits my love at work
In flannel jammy bottoms, button-down shirt
How he leans right through the screen to teach
The chasm vastness, fathoms’ reach
Of language: how to navigate its shoals
But first, to build a Ship of Theseus on coals
Of its own rotten planks, set aflame
With incendiary thought and classroom games!
He grades from early dawn to afternoon
Meets students, colleagues, somehow still finds room
For poems and fiction, game design, and play
“Silliness can save us,” so he’ll say
And so, I bleat at him: a goat-girl, randy and hirsute
And offer cherries–they’re his favorite fruit
C.S.E. Cooney 