WHEN I THINK OF HER

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When I think of her
she’s not the discarded
old lady asterisk
lying in the ICU
swatting away nightmares like dive -bombing hornets

as darts of Florida sunshine

pierce through the body armor

of shuttered metal blinds

like a burst of machine gun fire
in an old Cagney film.
She’s my sister from the 1950s
who looked like the girl
on the label of the Fox’s U-Bet jar
dressed like an Ideal doll
in smoothed-down taffeta
and buckled-up Mary Janes
her hair tamed like a pony’s mane
her eyes the size of silver dollar pancakes
her profile a perfect hollow-cut silhouette
her smile a silent dispatch sent to our father
in the secret cryptography of daddy’s little girl heartbeats Whose syncopated beep...beep...beep
sound like the mechanical ventilator
that is trying to keep her from flying
far, far away
here in the ICU.

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