JAN BALL - POEMS

Jan has had 309 poems published in various journals including: Atlanta Review, Calyx, Chiron, Connecticut Review and Nimrod, in Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, England, India and The U.S.. Jan’s two chapbooks and full length poetry collection, I Wanted To Dance With My Father, are available from Finishing Line Press and Amazon. When not traveling, Jan and her husband like to cook for friends.

​

​revenge of the cockatoos

​At first, Keith chuckles and rubs his hands
 together, his shoulders bouncing up and
 down like Lleyton Hewitt preparing to serve
 at the Australian Open, when he sees
 the sulfur crested cockatoos dive-bombing
 pedestrians who pass in front of the red
 bottle brush shrubs he has planted with
 as much devotion as an Episcopalian Sunday
 School teacher explains Moses and the
 Burning Bush, his bushes a striking border
 for the gray convict cottage he has restored:
 cedar planks from a demolition yard, shutters
 he has adzed and stained himself, but not
 satisfied with harassing passers-by, the birds
 attack his weathered cedar, sharpening
 their beaks as companionably as bridesmaids
 getting manicures before a wedding.

 At night, as he tries to sleep in the soft Sydney
 air, he hears them pecking, pecking, pecking
 at the wooden exterior so, in lieu of a scarecrow,
 he ties a yellow kite to a shutter knob to try
 to end their repetitive grooming, but he is not
 successful. Finally, he crosses and crisscrosses
 fishing wire across the east side of the house
 like an intricate cat’s cradle and the noise stops.
 He goes to work the next day as flash as a rat
 with a gold tooth, happy as Larry that he has
 fixed the problem. When he returns at dusk
 whistling Abba’s Dancing Queen, however,
 he sees white feathers floating above splintered
 ruins as mystically as the background music
 in the Australian movie, Picnic at Hanging
 Rock. Revenge.

​Secure footing

​Ron helps her into the boat
 after the banquet on the island
 off Hong Kong mainland
 the way anyone would,
 holding her elbow to help her judge
 the little distance from the dock
 to the boat edge, her yellow espadrilles
 finally shuffling to secure footing
 on the boat bottom, so difficult
 for her now, until she sits staring
 as if lost in her own musings.

 She never did say much
 when we played cards with them
 in Chicago years ago, except
 to articulate the pinnochle words:
 I open, or pass.

 Her fingers, bedazzled with showy rings,
 clinked against the glass when she’d get up
 to mix another gin and tonic for us or fill
 the cashew bowl.

 Now she doesn’t comment
 on the charming stationary sanpans
 we pass, the Chinese women
 cooking on charcoal brassiers,
 their chicken or pork fragrant
 with four flavor spice
 in the nine p.m. hot breezes
 continuing from the sunny day.

 Once ashore,we say “Good-night,
 Cynthia,” and hug, the way we used to,
 but it’s clear she doesn’t know
 who we are any more.

​The Gleaning

The ancient distant hills are bruised
 with mist
 this morning in the South of France.

 Within the frame of a Millet painting,
 I sit under a tree, bucolic as one of
 my piebald bovine friends who chews cud.

 I listlessly gaze at the aproned women
 who glean the fields for leftovers
 after the nobility have taken what they want,

 then the noises of real life intrude:
 -grind of the morning coffee maker
 -flip-flop rhythmn of clothes in the European
 washing machine
 -and the forever coo-cooing
 of mourning doves in the pine trees.

 I step out of the frame into a foggy day.

​

​Until Fall

​All cold winter
 the snow piles up
 between us like
 the neighbor’s
 wall
 in Robert Frost’s
 poem,
 you late
 for dinner
 in Rochester
 most nights
 due to icey roads
 along Allen Creek,
 so you say.

 I clatter the pots
 on the stove
 as I reheat
 the chicken
 casserole
 with carrots
 and aromatic
 marjoram
 and feel more
 anger icycles
 accumulate
 on the eaves
 of our marriage.

 However,
 this morning,
 I wake with your
 fingers just grazing
 my left breast,
 your warm breath
 on my shoulder.

​Visiting My Sister

​I can’t face visiting my twin sister alone,
 in Cumming, Georgia, after this two-day
 conference in Buckhead, trendy suburb
 of Atlanta. My sister let her ortho take out
 her whole hip like a roast out of the freezer.

 The ortho couldn’t clear up her infection
 from her hip replacement after a year
 of trying so she has to wear a four inch high
“elevator shoe” (we called them as children
 in Chicago) when everyone we knew had hips
 and noone scooted around in wheelchairs
 like she does now.

 Medical friends suggested she go to an ortho
 at a university hospital and even though she only
 sheepishly replied, “But my ortho likes me,”
instead of changing enthusiasticly when we told her
 what they advised, I understand that she probably
 didn’t want to leave the convenience of her hospital
 for Northwestern or Rush nearer us.

 Her hospital was poorly rated on YELP and
 the doctor got snarly with “interfering relatives”
who asked about her options. She wouldn’t
 ask the doctor the brand of the hip replacement
 so we could figure out if her doctor used a cheaper,
 defective one so she could sue, he must have realized.

 We do appreciate that she was malnourished
 when she first saw the doctor which must have
 given him a certain perspective and is partly why
 her children finally suggested a senior facility
 in Cumming where her oldest boy, Eric, lives.

 Nevertheless, tonight, my husband and I will eat well
 at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse with my sister plus Eric
 and his wife, Sharon. They’ve made the reservation.

 I’ll bet my sister will order fish or soft lobster
 since she won’t replace her upper partial and fish
 is softer than the steak which Ruth’s Chris is known for
 plus it’s nutritious which she needs because she continues
 to suck gummy bears and Reeses Peanut Butter Cups
 supplementing her senior living diet.