Now tell me no more about Christmas,
I have survived it once again
busy, short-shrift no less
than usual.
It’s the tinsel, the politics, the hype.
I have survived it once again
hungry, bereft no less
than usual.
Someday I’ll pass it all by
the tinsel, the petty politics, the hype,
and celebrate the astonishing love meant
to be usual.
Wanda McCollar
I wanted a frog
in my garden,
I wanted his voice,
his splashing around,
when one appeared
I scorned him.
Was it my aversion to
nictitating membranes
slipping over
blinkless eyeballs,
or webby-toed
sticky suctions, his
unforgivable froginess?
There are other things
that look like frogs –
flowers in green paper,
rumpled blankets,
a crumpled letter,
tear-soaked Kleenex
looks like a frog,
his pond-green Peugeot
leaping away.
Wanda McCollar
Sexual Selection
A nematode glides,
aimless, undulant, until he spies
a female opportunity,
then, excited, accurate, quick,
hot-wired for it.
On a broad leaf
fruit flies assemble,
displaying their greatest intentions,
she inspects these
contenders (for a week!)
One mating is all she gets
ever, but no shortage of
healthy progeny --
good choice.
Echoing trills, moonlit
dances, aerial acrobatics,
erect feathers and
splendid blue faces,
peafowl, pheasant, penguin
all know what to look for,
warbler, wolf, fox
better make good choices –
it's a mate for life.
Enlargement pills, trading,
selling, buying, cheating,
beating, addiction, abandonment,
pedophilia, murder –
you know the rest.
The species that exercises free will.
Wanda McCollar
Suppose an Apple
of Queen Elizabeth I
who lifted her spirits
by its smell,
and a boy tipping
one after another into
the pounder, of cider,
of calvados,
of Pliny who told
about those who ate naught
and lived by
this smell alone. Suppose
from a filigree of
raggedy rows,
from windfalls pillowed
beneath
laden branches,
one --
perfect in the palm
round, firm
smelling of morning,
of crispin, ginger gold,
jonathan, winesap from
the Shenandoah Valley,
of gravenstein,
paula red and ruby jon,
of peelings yellow, green, red
and nearly black,
of firm white flesh
sweet and tart.
Crunch.
Wanda McCollar
