Cindy Hochman

​Eyebrows                               

After the chemo zapped my eyebrows to Kingdom Come, I drew an arched and defiant line in the sand _____________________________________.

**
 
This is from the author's chapbook Habeas Corpus (Glass Lyre Press.)
 
**
​
Mouth

Cluck and chatter. Boy-kisses, mouthful of roses. Later, cocks of the walk (an oral history). After that, foot in mouth (oops!). It’s feeding time at the zoo, but there’s nothing left in the trough. And there’s no such thing as a boxed lunch. Oh, let me eat cake before I march off to the guillotine (no appetite for war). Burble, babble, and gorge. Shut like a timid clam or singing like a blue canary. Pretty mouth, pouty mouth, putty mouth, poet mouth. Me speak with forked tongue lolling in my mouth. Let me throw my sins and cusses into the Hudson River. Into the Finger Lakes. Into Montego Bay. Into the Atlantic Ocean. Mouth full of ice pops and Sheetrock and snowflakes. Vodka laced with Valium. Brickbats and boll weevils. And anything else I can cram (shove) (stuff) into this ravenous mouth. Venomous mouth. Unquenchable mouth.

**
 
This is from the author's chapbook Habeas Corpus (Glass Lyre Press.)

**
 
Fingers
            
What a thrill / My thumb instead of an onion                                                                                                  
“Cut,” Sylvia Plath

Twiddle and Twitter and trace. Fingers are everywhere these days—it’s a digital world. There are tables full of finger food and it’s finger-lickin’ good. Every finger wants to be a steeple or a temple or a little teapot. Everyone wants to have warm and holy fingers, thumbs up or thumbs down. Little fingers playing pick-up sticks and jacks. My clumsy fingers dropping the ball. Do you have sticky fingers, stinky fingers, or extra fingers like Hemingway’s cats? According to Plath, a severed thumb is a joy forever. Did you lose your finger in the war? I lost mine at Niagara Falls. When he slipped that lethal ring around my golden finger, it turned a mad blue. If I snap my fingers, will you come? One finger on the pulse and one on the trigger. Beware the full lunula—you don’t know what these crazy fingers can do. Fingers strumming my imaginary guitar, dialing my imaginary lover, counting my imaginary dough. Arthritic fingers turning the vintage page. Here’s to the middle finger, the victory fingers, the ones that call time, and the ones that say peace. Get your greedy fingers out of the pie and your haughty finger out of my face. Stop picking those blistered fingers; stop biting those nails. Can’t you lift a finger? Didn’t your mama ever tell you it’s not nice to point?

**
 
This is from the author's chapbook Habeas Corpus (Glass Lyre Press.)

**

Bechstein Debauchery*
 
Brahms and Bach (J.S. and all the beaucoup baby Bachs, and who doesn’t love those concertos of Brandenburg?), and maybe Bartók with a bit of Berlioz. Or Bernstein (Leonard). Beloved Belafonte’s banana boat. And I bet you all remember the boisterous, bawdy, and bodacious beats of Boléro while beautiful Bo (and her big bogus boobs) bounced toward the breakers on the beach. Those brilliant British boys, the Beatles, buoyed by Chuck Berry, beseeched Beethoven to roll over, and I would beckon him to begin the beguine (bah, that was Cole Porter, who has no “B” in his name whatsoever). But although I’m bonkers for Beethoven’s breathtaking symphony (the Ninth), which he banged out with broken and beleaguered ears, did he bring us “Blinded by the Light,” or “Because the Night,” or “Badlands,” “Backstreets,” “Better Days,” “Bobby Jean,” “Born to Run,” “Born in the USA,” or my best-loved ballad, “Brilliant Disguise”? So, beat it, Beethoven—in your day you may have been broadly and blatantly ballyhooed, but for us rabid buffs, Bruce will always be the Boss, even though he was birthed in Long Branch, not Asbury as everyone and their brother believes. (I was only bluffing, Ludwig von B—come back.) Bruuuuce Springsteen and Beeeeethoven. Bravo, boys. And bless you both for your blazes of brightness, which I can always bank on to banish my blues.

**

*Carl Bechstein from Berlin was a maker of pianos, and on one of his albums, Freddie Mercury of Queen claimed to be supplying the “Bechstein debauchery.” It took me years to figure out who Bechstein was (the “debauchery” I had no trouble with). I was sad to learn that Bechstein was an early supporter of Nazism. However, I couldn’t resist using his “B” name in the title of this poem.

**
 
Poet “C,” Poet Do

for Cassandra Atherton, my comrade at Canberra
                                                            
How many cognomens of creative creatures contain the letter “C?” Come, you and I, let us cogitate on this. Our chronology could commence with Christina (Rossetti) and Chaucer of Canterbury. At Christmastime, we can’t neglect Clement Clarke Moore (who coined “A Visit from St. Nick,” more commonly called “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”). Lewis Carroll coveted cocaine, or maybe just cognac and champagne (Cocteau and Jim Carroll the same, and come to think of it, there were certainly cure-alls in Coleridge’s colorful cognition). Subsequent centuries hence: Corso, of course. And can we include Neal Cassady, though he was more of a cool and caddish conquistador than a conscientious coscenarist (to confirm this fact, consult Corso’s compadre and colleague Allen Ginsberg). Capote wasn’t considered a poet, but his chilling book of chapters In Cold Blood carries a “C,” so let’s include that upper-crust curmudgeon in this catalog. And when I’m cold, I cuddle up for cozy comfort from cover to cover with Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, or in my case, caustic and wry, which is not the same as a corned beef on rye, which has too much cholesterol for me to consume. And for you feline connoisseurs, The Great Catsby? (Chuff, chuff, couldn’t resist). Chatterton, Chesterton, Carruth. Celan (Paul). Cohen (Leonard). Did you know that e.e. cummings couldn’t care less about lowerCASE (his copy editor created that construct, which made Cummings cringe). Concise Creeley (Robert). Clever Collins (Billy). And Hart Crane could have used a cane (or a Life Saver candy, the company of which his father was the CEO, cruelly ironic). Now let’s champion a consortium of women: Amy Clampitt, Lucille Clifton, Willa Cather. Concluding comments? C no evil and hand me that C-note (because this crazy cutie craves currency). Cool! This compendium is currently complete. Cheerio, cheeky chums.

**

“L” is for Love, Lust, and Loads of Laundry

Lo and behold, the following lines have little to do with loads of laundry. But do you love lists and litanies? Do you love loquacious alphabetical alliteratives? And doesn’t the whole world love love? Lo contraire. Not the luckless. Not the lovelorn. Not those who have been left alone in their lofts by lawless lowlifes on Lexington. Lords and ladies: if you are looking to locate the love of your life, whether you live in Louisiana, Las Vegas, or London, then listen to my little libretto: No lousy lovers. No listless or lackadaisical liars or losers or lumbering lamebrains who get lost limping to the loo. I love them lanky and long-limbed and never late. I lean toward left-wing liberals. And when my latest beloved is lying leisurely in my lapis lazuli lair, I like to lick a lollipop lustily like Linda Lovelace. Ooh la la! Now let’s learn what you love. Do you love ’Lizabeth Bishop’s lament about loss, or Louise Glück, or Thomas Lux in Luxembourg, or more likely, at Sarah Lawrence, where he lectured before he left the living? And please don’t leave out those loony surrealists Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard. Do you love Lucy? I love Lucy. Do you love Lloyd’s of London, which lent my lithe legs a million liras (well, not really, and a million liras looks like a lot, but it’s only 53,108 dollars in legal tender. I had to look that up, LOL). Actually, I loathe Lloyd’s of London. They believe my legs are lurid and lumpy, but I love them nonetheless. Oh Lord, my limbs are starting to lurch and lag, and the lifespan of this ludicrous lyric is limited. So, last but not least: love is sometimes lonely but usually lovely. Later, alligator. La la la la.

**
 
On My Not-So-Sullen Craft*
 
Sculpted from chunks of metal and bits of raw bone, slow-baked in a kiln of hyperbole and passion, the first wail of a poem as pure and greedy as a baby, and I was there at the moment of conception. Soon it will suck its tiny red thumb and stamp its restless feet. Every poem is a finger, an oyster. A pot of strong cappuccino, a bowl of maraschino cherries. I have taken mouthfuls of it, gorged myself on free verse, immersed myself in a waterfall of wandering words, an orgy of onomatopoeia. Oh, I love poetry like Walt loved the flesh of soldiers, and Emily, her garden. Like Blake was enamored with the chimneys of London, and Poe, the gutter. I will write a poem as tall as the Sears Tower. I’ll sign it, seal it, lick it around the edges, and mail it to the world so everyone will know my soul. With grist to the grindstone, a fifth in the flask, and my own strain of melancholic joy, I will pull strands of image, like colored scarves, out of my poetic pocket in the abracadabra of night. I will drive my boot whip-fast into the heart of it. I will mend it like a just-sutured wound. Ah, to pick up my scalpel and make the first incision, sew it up, and then, happily, give it to you.

**
 
*The title is taken from Dylan Thomas’s poem “In My Craft or Sullen Art.”

**

This poem is from the author's chapbook Wednesday’s Child (Bear House Press).
 
**

​Cindy Hochman is the founder of “100 Proof” Copyediting Services and the editor-in-chief of the online journal First Literary Review-East. She has been on the book review staff of Pedestal Magazine, and has written reviews for American Book Review and many others. She has had two poems published in Australian anthologies, Alcatraz and Play. She is the author of five chapbooks, including collaborations with Bob Heman. Her latest chapbook is Telling You Everything (Unleash Press, 2022). Cindy resides in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, USA, where she writes, edits, meditates, learns tai chi, studies the Russian language, and agonizes over politics.