Use What Fits

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

i drank too much
and learned that i can fit
a day’s worth of clothes
a bungee cord
a pair of gloves
an oversized computer cord
a MacBook
and a six-pack of vanilla porter
in my saddle bag
(though the bike will tip if i let go).

this is a list poem
so let me add
that with the shower
the lack of wash cloths
and the realization
that towels were in the dryer,
he and i shared a single hand towel
to dry our dripping skin,
got out the exercise ball
and had us a real ball
(punny, right? it was.)

what could i fit in a Friday?
a five a.m. bike ride
seven classes
three 200-hundred-word posts
a happy two hours
with five friends at the bar
finishing my latest novel
dinner with my family
and love with my husband.

Room of Punishment

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i heard what happened
in a roundabout way
as all families today,
over Internet connections
and telephone lines,
communicating the news
of those who can’t communicate.

i cringed in my mixture of pain, guilt,
of love, sorrow, my emotions
breeding from those moments
in my childhood when i sat,
holed up under my blankets
in a dark room of punishment,
wishing i could be instead
in your arms, your wet kisses
rough on my cheek, your
planned-out dinners and desserts
waiting for approval,
your I love yous ending every sentence.

instead, you have been moved
from one dark room of punishment
to another, shuffled around
like a naughty child,
no parent (child or grandchild)
able to solve the dilemma of your age.

i am one of them,
two generations down,
with young children of my own
who will never sit in a room
wishing for your warmth.

all i can do with
the electronically-presented words
still ringing in my ears,
is hole up in my room of punishment
and wish that i had called you
before they took your phone away,
wish that i had visited
before He took your mind away.

Essay

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Can I write a long essay
instead of creating a PowerPoint?
should I hear words such as this
when writing, writing, writing is my life
and that is all he’s asking to do
and all that I’m denying him?

Yes I should, because I am building
twenty-first century learners
who know how to create action buttons
and add in Googled graphics
transitions that pop and sparkle,
and change the colors of their fonts.

Yes, these are the important skills
that will carry them into English 101
where they will sit amongst 600 others
and struggle to understand thesis,
paragraphs, critical thinking that I,
with this PowerPoint, have denied him.

Dear Ball

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You may sit,
a gluttonous ball of air
collecting dust most of the year.
but this exercise ball has bounce,
and if the district who offered you to me
knew what we’ve used you for,
they’d shake my hand for
burning the most calories
in the most creative fashion.
Thank you, ball,
for bouncing into my life.

Borrowing

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my new favorite band
sings just to me
when you have pain or debt
who do you borrow from?

i think of Dunbar again
(just one riotous day)
and the root, of course,
in my love affair with words.

debt: Latin (debere), to owe
how ironic, rhymes with borrow
and i wonder if the Avetts, whose
name sounds like the Latin avis (bird)

are asking me (they sing to me)
if i borrow pain (can we borrow suffering?)
or if debt is a form of pain
or if it is life we borrow.

i will never know.
i am just a listener of songs
like all the other listeners,
borrowing their music to bury my pain.

Troop Leader

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it may have taken two years
of counting and miscounting
of piling up paperwork
and learning to manage
twenty five-then-six-now-seven-year-olds,
of arguing parents
and camping trip disasters
and never forgetting how to forget,
but here i am,
Girl Scout troop leader,
just for a moment feeling like
I’ve got this down,
I can do this,
I can count and organize,
I can be just what I need to be
in the eyes of
my daughters
their daughters
the daughters of the world
(or world, the one we want to give them).

Autumnal Arrival

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fall arrived with yesterday’s wind
just as i said a storm was coming.
rain pelts the windows,
startles the sidewalks.
absent for months,
when summer needed its moisture,
it mocks the golden-red leaves
and glistens the world with
the season that they have
ached for, begged for, for months.

i miss yesterday
when the sun still streaked
across the plains
and shorts were still acceptable.
and the girls? they spent
every afternoon, evening, night
relishing in the warmth
of a gluttonous season.

but here it is
a reminder of what we want
(to have or to let go of)
and it is here to stay
(autumn? here to stay?)
change is here to stay.

Wind (Personified)

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the wind tries to
dominate our day
but we pedal anyway

the wind beats up
giant clouds of dust
(to the pumpkin fest or bust)

the wind reaches out
to grab them from the air
but pumpkin launchers couldn’t care

the wind helps us
with a tailwind home
kicking up leaves wherever we roam.

Pie

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how strange it is to hear them
in the back seat of our car,
though they belong to us.
wasn’t it only a moment ago
that he and i drove down this road
and stopped at Village Inn for pie,
a Friday night with nowhere to go,
nothing to do, no responsibilities?

they chirp their wonderings like baby birds,
but they are no longer babies
as they sing in Spanish the
possibilities of what color
Doctor Dino, the preschool
take-home toy, will be next year, as he
has changed from blue to red to green
in the hands of oldest, middle, youngest.

Denver, too, has changed since i first,
at age eleven, took a bus across town
with my friend, eating lunch in
the Tabor Center and pretending to shop.
now the light rail has taken us here,
to a Convention Center that didn’t exist
amongst fancy four-star hotels built up
like mocking gods in the face of recession.

he and i, we are not the same either.
there will be no stop at Village Inn,
no pie. instead we listen:
“Va ser… ¡rojo! ¡rosario! ¡amarillo! ¡azul!”
and i think, we’ll never know the color.
our baby will be out of preschool, Doctor Dino
will be in some other little girl’s home,
and these streets? they’ll never stay the same.

Mole

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you are a cancerous mole
on otherwise flawless skin
appearing from nowhere
but settling in with a vicious sting
as if you have always belonged.

perhaps you have been there
hiding beneath scabs and
thin strands of golden hair,
waiting in the depths of tissue
to release your venom.

now you haunt my fingers
as they try to dance across
the once-smooth place you’ve
chosen to poison. but i know
that you won’t be here long.

i swallow the thought of your release
with these pills of gratitude
that i have purchased without you knowing.
you may have sneaked into my life,
but your exit will be quick and painless.