grow fast as the moon. Midnight!
Please don’t run away.
—Amy Billone
from Casual: A Little Book of Jeans Poems & Photos,
T. S. Poetry Press
Cooking Class, Illinois, Mid 70s
Along her immaculate counter: silo
of red-handled sifter, bright order
of silver spoons, lemon bales of butter
softening in late winter light. In cupboards
her husband the carpenter built, bars
of Baker’s Chocolate, dried figs, quartered
apricots and Mason Jars of brined harvest.
A good cook puts up her hair, wears
apron, stores flour in freezer to keep
Boll Weevils out, uses shells of her egg
as a tool to separate yolk from white.
She also wears dresses, I learned
when, for donning jeans, she informed me
she no longer wished me to babysit. She cited,
over the phone to my mother, the effect
it might have on her son, the kind of wife
he might choose, the man he’d become
as I chased him on my hands and knees round
the living room’s glass table she refused to move
when he was born. He’d learn, she’d said, he’d learn
soon enough, where he stopped and she began.
— Tania Pryputniewicz, from Casual: A Little Book of Jeans Poems & Photos, T. S. Poetry Press
Anyday
Wash some dirty dishes
Gather up rumpled clothes
Diaper a soft pink bottom
Change the sheets
Pluck a few stray eyebrows
Wonder why
Feed hungry mouths
Drink some black tea
Pick crumbs off the couch
Change the batteries
Read Moo Baa La La La again
Wander room to room
Barely balance an account
Shampoo little brown curls
Pass out vitamins
Write a couple lines of code
Kiss husband hello or goodbye
Scribble a grocery list
Wish vaguely
Sweep up dried playdough chunks
Empty the dishwasher
Fold warm scented laundry
Brush sixty-eight teeth
Type a blog post
Lay my head down
Whisper a prayer
Get one day closer
—T.U.C., first appeared at Tweetspeak Poetry
The cure for writer’s block
is laundry.
Cram both arms with dirty clothes and
stuff them in the washer.
Brim the detergent, vinegar, bleach, if you dare.
Sit back down.
Write a bit more.
In thirty minutes or an hour, the dinger will ding.
Heap the wet mess into the dryer,
but wait.
The dryer is already packed because you forgot
to fold the last load. Divest the dryer.
Fold the clean clothes, arrange them into piles:
one for him, with you beside him (where you always are),
one for the son, one for the daughter —
the closest they will ever be is these towering piles
of bras, boxers, T-shirts, jeans, uniforms.
Now the dryer is void. Fill it.
Sit down again.
Write.
When the dinger dings, ignore it.
Write on.
Forget to clear the dryer.
—Megan Willome, first appeared in Every Day Poems. Also in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press
Who Am I?
“Let’s go for a walk,”
she’d say, and then my mother
would circle the block. I’d question
why we couldn’t go farther. My body
could handle it. But Merry
Nell’s couldn’t. She needed a horcrux
or, perhaps, more than one horcrux.
To figure that out, she’d need a longer walk
through the neighborhood. She’d be merry,
as she always was. I am a mother
who likes to push her body.
There’s no question
about it. But every day I question
why I am her horcrux.
Why everybody seems to think that I am walking her walk,
that I am mothering like my mother.
It’s true. My name is also Merry,
and I also chose to marry
at 21. That is not the question.
I need to know how to mother
without one. All I have is a horcrux,
one I bring with me each morning I take a walk:
my own body.
But it’s acting strangely, my body.
It’s giving me signs, as yours did, Merry
Nell. Oh, it still can walk
up actual mountains. But I do question
because it doesn’t feel like mine. It feels like a horcrux.
I feel like I am you, my dear, dead mother.
And I’m not, am I? Holy Mary, mother
of God. Pray. You’re not here in body.
Neither is my mom. She’s only a horcrux.
She wasn’t into you, Mary. She didn’t even have a question
about you. Not even when she couldn’t walk.
Like Harry, I am the horcrux. I am not my mother.
I can still walk, and I still dwell in this body.
But I am Merry Megan. No question.
—(Merry) Megan Willome, from The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press
Seal Lullaby
Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark
overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.
—Rudyard Kipling, see more in Kipling: Poems
Blue Moon
Mom gets two full moons, one early,
one on New Year’s Eve eve when
we talk as only mothers and daughters can—
speech as rocky as the lunar surface.
After she’s gone will I still orbit her earth?
Will her tides still move my every wave?
I am standing alone, waving goodbye.
She will ring in the new year with dreams in her heart,
with the love of her own dear husband, who adores her,
who wishes me a safe drive as I look
in my rearview mirror and the moon
has indeed turned to gold.
—Megan Willome, from The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press
The Woman at the Stoplight
I see in her face
that oh, she needs it too—
a gap in the day,
cloistered though not
confining,
person-
sized pocket to slip into,
buffered as by a cloud’s
sheer inner lining,
for a breath
of self-replenishment,
self-repair,
or only just
a breath,
(stanza break)
and then
(I promise!)
out again,
far from too much
to ask,
so with the full force
of my small ferocity,
I importune the air:
“What would it cost
you who are only
lavish, seamless,
great incorporeal sprawl
of everywhere?—
open!
And admit us.”
—Claire Bateman, first appeared in Every Day Poems, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press
On the Eve of Your Thirteenth Birthday
for Jeffrey
the last day of twelve
was nothing special,
you said.
you didn’t dress for gym,
didn’t play four-square with
the others. only walked,
you said.
In English, you wrote
a myth…about Gusano—
it means worm in Spanish
you said.
this Greco-Spanish
worm-god found freedom,
you said.
but he led his people
back into the
earth to rule the Underworld
and that’s why he will
be responsible for
the zombie apocalypse,
you said.
and math was about
interest, like money and
banks, you know?
you said.
and you have homework
so you came home in
a bad mood and didn’t
want to talk about twelve
you said.
so i hushed and got out
the eggs, cracked them one-by-
one in the bowl and mixed until
those yellow eyes are gone; i
rubbed grease on the pan that is
swathed in black enamel
from years of cradling sweet
batter…and i poured more
in. you at the table building
up interest when the room
starts to smell like a birthday.
and suddenly, you are there,
beside to lick the batter from
the bowl. what time was I
born?
you said.
—Laura Boggess, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press
Valentine’s Chai
Sitting in a sunny cafe, I call my parents
because I can’t stand to hear
bad news at home.
So I call from here, on my cell,
armed with chai.
She’s telling the doctor, No more.
She will leave his office with some pills
that will lengthen her sweet tooth in time
for Valentine’s Day.
I quaff my tea and head to the store
for candy hearts, chocolate hearts,
Reese’s peanut butter hearts, heart-shaped
cookies piled with icing—any
confectionary way to say I love you I love
you I love you I love you I love you.
—Megan Willome, from The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press