October 2024
Bio Note: I’m a recently retired college English instructor living in Beaverton, Oregon with my husband and our dog Zlatic. My poems have appeared in VerseDaily, Quartet, The Fiddlehead, Crab Creek Review, San Pedro River Review, Watershed and elsewhere. I’m in the final semester of my MFA at Pacific University. You can find more of my work on my website.
Five Decades After the Mojave
I keep a cactus and a calendar
on my desk, both of them crutches.
The calendar tacks me to the present,
the cactus longs for childhood through
rain-freckled glass. I appreciate months
that behave, follow along in orderly rows,
but in my head, years are oval—
fall and spring quick curves eclipsed
by long slow arcs of winter, summer.
Flipping pages keeps time staccato.
Had I torn each month from its year
all my life, stacked them in the corner,
would they reach the windowsill?
And how would it feel, all my days lived
waist high? These are questions I ask
the cactus, though it never says anything
of value, just stands there weighing happiness
in eyedroppers, the drip, drip I provide
when I realize I’ve forgot.
Curator
She told it so often, it’s like I was there—
my mother at eleven, already chunky,
waving a palm frond as she chases a boy
down the street. Eventually he turns
and becomes my father.
Another image, my mother in tangled sheets,
black and white photo, her bent arm
shelters a newborn, dark hair frames
her still-beautiful face.
A blonde toddler squats naked
on a dried-out lawn, garden hose
to her mouth. The annual parade
of roasted turkeys, forgotten puppies,
semi-formal dresses. A man plays guitar.
Sepia uncles and aunts. A Polaroid of two
of my sisters in miniskirts vamping
on the hood of a car.
Everything silent. Everything still.
The domestic carnival of laughter and pain,
tart perfume, burned toast, scratched records,
scraped knees, our father’s baritone,
barking dogs, all of it distilled
to a chin thrust forward, forced smile,
a little too much light in the eyes.
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