Category: Poetry

“Most of the Days of the Week” by Deirdre Fagan

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry13 Comments

On Monday you make pancakes, pay the bills, clean the floor, wipe down the counters, and begin chopping vegetables for soup. As the knife slices the onion thin, you peel away its outer layer and consider committing seppuku at noon.

On Tuesday you start the Crock-Pot, dust the blinds, rake the leaves, strip the beds, and carry the laundry downstairs. You put the wash on delicate, cold, and as you turn to go upstairs to the hum of the washer balancing its own mind, you longingly consider freshly washed, warmed, and crisp sheets tied gracefully around a rafter and your neck. Those beams appear strong.

Wednesday after tucking the kids into bed and starting the dishwasher, you wash your face, brush and floss your teeth, and line every pill bottle in the medicine cabinet up on the bathroom counter before considering what they will find in the morning. Then you carefully place the bottles back in the cupboard, turn out the lights, and climb into bed yourself, after checking the breaths of your children.

Thursday night you have a little bit too much to drink. Some wine. Several beers. Rum in a hot cup of tea. Then you remember something Nietzsche said about thoughts of suicide getting many through a dark night. This week you’ve made it three and a half days but it isn’t the weekend yet. You aren’t sure if N is right, but you know you can’t drink the antifreeze.

Friday you go out for groceries and consider high speed, a curve, a tree, or maybe that bridge over there. But you probably wouldn’t even be successful and then what a mess you’d make. No one would be there to clean it up. And the kids. Who would make them breakfast?

Saturday, you roll over to turn off the alarm but there isn’t one. A blessing. Shortly thereafter there are kids on top of you, climbing over you, giggling, offering to get you coffee, begging for eggs and bacon, and so you make your way to the kitchen.

When the grease in the bacon pan begins to sizzle, you don’t imagine dousing yourself in it or starting a grease fire. Instead you serve up breakfast and sip your coffee admiring the life you have created, the one still in the making.

 

~ Deirdre Fagan (to read more of Deirdre’s work–and I encourage you to do so–visit her site: deirdrefagan.com. Gratitude to Deirdre for allowing us to share her beautiful poem here with you.)

“Most of the Days of the Week” by Deirdre Fagan first appeared on Melancholy Hyperbole. 

 

“War Horse” by Richard Brautigan

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

He stands alone in a pasture
but nobody can see him.

He has been made invisible
by his own wounds.

I know how he feels.

– Richard Brautigan, “War Horse”

“Moving to Malibu” by Mary K. Stillwell

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

Some nights I think of it,
moving to Malibu, just as I stretch,
like a cat stretches, to my full length,
as though I am easing into cool waters.
I imagine the blue of the sea;
the bright green leaves of the geranium
on the patio, the bright pink blooms,
the yellow sun and white sand,
in the distance, white triangles,
from the deck, wind chimes.
I will be as content and as happy
as Balboa. I will have breakfast
at my wicker table and in my wicker chair,
with the cats watching. I will taste
salt on my lips after coffee.
My door will be open. When you come,
you will carry a loaf of bread,
a bunch of flowers. The sunset
is brilliant; we might as well be anywhere.

“Moving to Malibu” by Mary K. Stillwell from Maps and Destinations. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2014.

“Sister Cat” by Frances Mayes

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

Cat stands at the fridge,
Cries loudly for milk.
But I’ve filled her bowl.
Wild cat, I say, Sister,
Look, you have milk.
I clink my fingernail
Against the rim. Milk.
With down and liver,
A word I know she hears.
Her sad miaow. She runs
To me. She dips
In her whiskers but
Doesn’t drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
When it is on. Or when
I saw the woman walking
toward my house and
I thought there’s Frances.
Then looked in the car mirror
To be sure. She stalks
The room. She wants. Milk
Beyond milk. World beyond
This one, she cries.

 

from Ex Voto, 1995
Lost Roads Publishers, Little Rock, Ark.

Copyright 1995 by Frances Mayes.

“Convenience Stores” by Buddy Wakefield

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Spoken Word6 Comments

We both know the smell of a convenience store at 4 a.m. like the backs
of alotta hands.
She sells me trucker crack/Mini-Thins (it’s like Vivarin).
She doesn’t make me feel awkward about it.
She can tell it’s been a long drive and it’s only gonna get longer.
Offers me a free cup of coffee, but I never touch the stuff.
Besides, I’m gonna need more speed than that.

We notice each other’s smiles immediately.
It’s our favorite thing for people to notice—our smiles.
It’s all either one of us has to offer.
You can see it in the way our cheeks stretch out like arms
wanting nothing more than to say, “You are welcome here.”

She—
shows brittle nicotine teeth with spaces between each one.
Her fingers are bony, there’s no rings on’m, and she’d love to get’er nails
done someday.
One time she had’er hair fixed.
They took out the grease, made it real big on top, and feathered it.
She likes it like that.
She’ll never be fully informed on some things just like I will never understand
who really buys Moon Pies, or those rolling, wrinkled, dried-up sausages.
But then again, she’s been here a lot longer than me.
She’s seen everything
from men who grow dread locks out of their top lips
to children who look like cigarettes.

I give’er my money.
I wait for my change.
But I feel like there’s something more happening here.

I feel—
like a warm mop bucket and dingy tiles that’ll never come clean.
I feel like these freezers cannot be re-stocked often enough.
I feel like trash cans of candy wrappers
with soda pop dripping down the wrong side of the plastic.
I feel like everything just got computerized.
I feel like she was raised to say a LOT of stupid things about a color.
And I feel like if I were to identify myself as gay—
this conversation would stop.

It’s what I do.
I feel.
I get scared sometimes.
And I drive.

…But in 1 minute and 48 seconds I’m gonna walk outta here with a full tank of
gas, a bottle of Mini-Thins, and a pint of milk while there’s a woman still
trapped behind a formican counter somewhere in North Dakota who says she
wants nothing more than to hear my whole story, all 92,775 miles of it.

I can feel it though, y’all, she’s heard more opinions and trucker small talk than
Santa Claus has made kids happy, so I only find the nerve to tell’er the good
parts, that she’s the kindest thing to happen since Burlington, VT, and I wanna
leave it at that because men—who are not smart—have taken it farther, have
cradled her up like a nutcracker and made her feel as warm as a high school education
on the dusty back road, or a beer, in a coozy.

I feel like she’s been waiting here a long time for the one who’ll come 2-steppin’
through that door on 18 wheels without makin’er feel like it’s her job to
sweep up the nutshells alone when she’s done been cracked again, who won’t
tempt her to suck the wedding ring off his dick, but will show her— simply—
LOVE.

She doesn’t need me or any other man but she doesn’t know that either, and I’m
just hopin’ like crazy she doesn’t think I’m the one because the only time I’ll
ever see North Dakota again is in a Van Morrison song late (LATE) at night, I
promise.

Y’all, I feel like she’s 37 years old wearing 51 (badly), dying inside (like certain
kinds of dances around fires) to speak through you, a forest, if you weren’t so
taken with sparks.

But she was never given those words.
She has not been told she can definitely change the world.
She knows some folks do
but not in convenience stores
and NOT with lottery tickets
so
I finally ask’er what I’ve been feelin’ the entire time I’ve been standin’ there

still
gettin’ scared like I do sometimes
really (REALLY) ready to drive
I ask,

“Is this it for you?
Is this all you’ll ever do?”

Her smile
collapsed.

That tightly strapped-in pasty skin
went loose.

Her heart
fell crooked.

She said (not knowin’ my real name),
“I can tell, buddy, by the Mini Thins and the way ya drive—

we’re both taken with novelty.

We’ve both believed in mean gods.

We both spend our money on things that break too easily like…

people.

And I can tell
you think you’ve had it rough
so especially you should know…

It’s what I do,
I dream.
I get high sometimes.
And I’m gonna roll outta here one day.

I just might not get to drive.”

–from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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