Alex M. Frankel

POETRY

“After an Invitation to My Baptism, the Silence of Lorie and Annette,” read by Alex M. Frankel.

After an Invitation to My Baptism, the Silence of Lorie and Annette

cf. Luke 14:15-24

I set the day and invite many.
Carlton says “I’m on chemo pills and 10 a.m. is early.”
Lucy says “I’m a hundred and six, I can’t move.”
Brian says “I bought a horse and need to visit him.”
I get mad and invite the local cleaning lady.
I invite a chef from the loneliness center.
I invite two drunks from my HOA.
And they all have good excuses.
It’s like trying to recruit mourners for my father’s funeral.
My grumpy, adulterous, wicked dad.
I tried his geriatrician, his nephrologist, his rheumatologist,
Urologist oncologist dermatologist gastroenterologist,
Ten empty chairs the day of the burial.
Just the cantor chanting, me with a eulogy.
My father, who spent a hundred thousand on my bar mitzvah,
The first to tell me about gentile lore:
“No one walks on water, such craziness!”
Will the pews be empty then?
I write to Lorie who posts eighty times a day on Facebook.
How thoughtfully she drools over celebrities,
Screams for social justice and calls everyone “my Loves.”
From Lorie the silence is steady, grandiose, monumental.
On a whim, I write to Annette,
Her mother was a fundamentalist who neglected her
And so Annette’s silence is fraught and anarchic,
It grows, seeks to devour the landscape.
From my balcony, I submit to the silence.
But train horns clash in the valley.
Down in El Sereno, the tattered screech of a rooster.

“Cleanse Thou Me From Secret Faults,” read by Alex M. Frankel.

Cleanse Thou Me from Secret Faults

My cleaning lady misread a note I left her
And gave all my clothes to charity.
So I went to Dress for Less
And bought a cheap new wardrobe.
Then I walked up and down my hill
Listening to C.S. Lewis on the Psalms
Wishing some of his talent could rub off on me
When I make a speech the day of my baptism.
The pastor said my first draft looked long-winded
Though I’m paraphrasing, he would not say “long-winded.”
The last thing you want is to put people to sleep
Early on a Sunday in a church.
At the top of my hill, I ran into L.A.’s poet laureate
Who lives around the corner,
Sometimes she calls me “Michael” and other times
“Thomas” or “Randy,” she makes an angry face
If one does not bow down to her, because after all
She is the winning poet of a key town.
But what would Lewis or the psalmist say
About a writer who demands genuflection?
No one bows before Pastor Andy, who is a Lutheran
And does not insist anyone pay homage.
I once saw a woman kneel before L.A.’s archbishop
A man of more majestic rank than even a poet laureate.
In the film Luther, Martin the monk
Prostrates himself elaborately before an exalted cleric
Even after he’s nailed his theses to the door,
Perhaps our poet laureate would remember my name
If I prostrated myself before her, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
This time Madam Laureate called me “Harold”
And her scowl indicated Okay now please move on.
The bargain clothes felt comfortable on the hill
And amply fit my station in the pecking order.
I wondered about my clothes and who owns them now
And if I should deduct three hundred dollars
From my cleaning lady’s pay.
Would she still speak to me and clean up after me?
She’s nearly eighty and has only caused one little fire
And two small floods, is that so bad?
My friends say I should let her go, find someone else.
I ought to pray about this, turn it over,
I ought to rejoice for all the needy
Who now enjoy my clothes,
I ought to be grateful I’m no poet laureate
But a rank-and-file dude in the Lord’s vineyard
Who gets on with his work without much fanfare.
What would I do if everyone paid attention?
It might go to my head.

Alex M. Frankel, who sometimes publishes under the name Alejo Rovira Goldner, left Spain in the 1990s to settle in Southern California where he hosts the Second Sunday Poetry Series and leads writing workshops. His first collection, Birth Mother Mercy, appeared in 2013.

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