30 poems in 30 days: 25

I hate haiku.  And since tonight is my literary awards, and it's 6 PM (the bells in the church are tolling the hour), and I've got a stack of quizzes to grade, and I just attended a goodbye reception for a dear friend who's moving to Scotland soon, and since at that reception I had 1.5 glasses of Pinot Grigio, and since I also popped a Xanax and am thus feeling only a theoretical emotional pain at the moment, I am going to write a gang of haiku.

Gang of Haiku


I miss the sound of
the foghorn in Half Moon Bay,
and the blue light bed.

*

Once I saw Grandma
lift her shirt over her head:
two white scars. No breasts.

*

While Grandma napped we
searched for shells and sand dollars
on the highway beach.

*

I was ten when she
finally died.  Mom cried, said:
"One day. One more day."

*

I remember they
burned her coffin and we watched
it go down the chute.

*

But of course that's wrong.
Who would let three children watch
their grandmother burn?

*

I miss the salt smell
of the El Granada air.
I miss Grandpa's laugh.

*

Now that house falls down.
The highway beach is private.
California is

*

lost to the past, locked
long ago, far away, with
fog and moon and wet

*

sand, jellyfish, sea-
weed, breasts, burning, horns, moon, his
laugh, a small bed, death.