My Writing 316 Portfolio

Crib Death

Pregnancy was a blur.
I couldn’t remember giving birth.
But in the pink bedroom, with the sunlight pouring in,
changing your diaper was the best thing on earth.

The sweet smelling room,
the soft, fuzzy quilt you were lying on,
the dolls and bears waiting to be replaced
by sleepovers, phone calls and senior prom…

and in an instant the pillow was over your face
and I watched in horror as I took the air away.
My stomach jumped and twisted
but my hands never trembled as I looked down where you lay.

Then I sat down in the rocker by the door
and calmly passed the day and evening
until your father came home, and still I sat
unmoved and unmoving as I calmly watched him screaming.

Portal

The first time that I went over to your house
you took me inside your bedroom and closed the door
even though your yuppie parents were out of town.
Your stereo was spitting out music played by bands
that your walls were papered with
and the black light in the corner
cast a spell on it all.
You offered me a seat on your bed and some crayons
and we colored the knots out of our stomachs
till we were comfortable enough to touch.
Rolling in your expensive dark paisley bedcovers
that smelled of incense and you
we caught glimpses and tastes of a brave new world
without crossing over.

I’m glad that I left you alone
and that it wasn’t me you knocked up and married
but jesus god will I ever get that excited just to be somewhere again?
I’m older and everything’s duller
and nowadays even the Champs-Elysées
couldn’t draw the adrenaline that your room did
when I was sixteen.

Flee the Consequences

Let’s leave while we still can.
Grab our things and leave this town.
Get out of here before the shit hits the fan.

If we wait, then your old man
will figure out what’s going down.
Let’s leave while we still can.

There’s one too many fish in this frying pan.
The cook’s a crazy, fucked-up clown.
Get out of here before the shit hits the fan.

If I could go back to when it all began
I’d still reach for the lace of your gown.
Let’s leave while we still can.

We can go to Milwaukee or Milan.
San Francisco or London-town.
Get out of here before the shit hits the fan.

Who cares why they think we ran?
Let this train take us away and nothing bring us down.
Let’s leave while we still can.
Get out of here before the shit hits the fan.

disgruntled wife blues

I sit and hate you
as you brush your teeth.
I want to love you as I watch you shave
but I know you’re not trying to impress me
anymore
with all your bathroom chores.
Is it for some other woman?
Or just because you have to.
You don’t even notice
when I shave my legs and paint my toenails
a lovely shade of burgundy
and curl my hair till I look like I should be
in some Clairol ad
and put on a new trendy dress.
Everyone else noticed. And when you abandoned me
out on the porch, I spent an hour keeping your best
friend’s hands out of my dress. I don’t know why.
Like a damn fool I’m not ready to abandon us.
But I hope that I can feel appreciated before I die.
My only hope for you is that someday
you will be as great as you think you are.
I suppose that will be the second coming
and your ratty old bathrobe will become
a scarlet cape of splendor
and you'll save us all from ourselves
'cause you're so perfect.

Shaken

At certain points in the ebb and tide
you start to confuse different kinds of love.
I thought what we had was unmistakable.
I thought what we had was unshakable.
But I’m shaken.
I’m shaken.
And you’re as still as a deadbeat tide
on a planet with no moons to ride.

faux pas

The tiniest little crescent-shaped shadows
barely perceptible there on your sweater—
why do they have so much power?
To make us feel awkward
embarassed
and excited?
Uncomfortable whispers.
They’ve upset the order of things,
broken unspoken rules of society.
If we had ten moons around this planet
they’d still not compete
with what shines through your sweater today.
So subtle and so brazen.
Making men stutter and women blush.
Two tiny, innocent circles
throwing a room into chaos.
I think it’s fantastic. Fight the power!
They deserve the awkwardness if they
can’t see the beauty.

All of the above poems were written as assignments for a poetry class that I took in college. My professor, Dr. Dorothy Perry Thompson, lost her struggle with cancer just a few years later at the age of 57. Her talent for both poetry and teaching was phenomenal. Furthermore, she was as good a role model as a girl trying to grow into a woman could ever have. Few things would make me as happy as to know that I could, at least occasionally, carry myself as gracefully, beautifully and magnanimously as that woman did while I knew her.

And I can only hope that, in heaven, she is being richly rewarded for all those times she patiently listened to the god awful text we brought in to class and helped us turn it into poetry.

Ladder

I study the pattern of the floor tiles
brown and tan, very 1972,
sitting on the toilet at my new
office job.
For some reason, I start thinking
about the avant-garde white and
black bathroom floors of the last job
I had. I am glad to be here instead,
with my stomachache, knowing
that no one will come looking for me
if I am in here more than two minutes.
No, I didn’t have such luxuries at
the movie theatre. I couldn’t go missing.
Not for a stomachache, not for a soda,
not for a second of silence from the din
of the throbbing masses waiting to be
entertained. In fact I wound up
in the emergency room at three o’clock
one morning, peeing blood and
sweating on the paper gown, the
worst bladder infection the nurse
had seen, because there was no time
at work to go, no matter how much
you needed to. Don’t step away from the
counter. There are yuppies who need butter,
gangstas who want soda, mothers
who want to know who to complain to about
the language, unfulfilled women who want
to pitch a bitch about the fact that their
show is sold out, sexually frustrated men who
want to complain about the freshness of the
nachos, and supervisors who want to push the
Upsell Agenda. There’s no time for you,
bottom feeder, minimum wage worker,
and no one cares if your kidneys burst,
so long as they make the show on time, have
clean bathrooms when it’s over, and the
profit margin doubles every hour.