He’s a straight man
in action
He says he wants my womb
but when I really offer it
he backtracks
says he and his husband just want the cats
meanwhile
I’m hearing in my other ear
that he asked another
to share his DNA with
someone prettier, slimmer
with bluer eyes than mine
even though mine are moderately blue
He’s a straight man in action
walking toward me
and turning to smoke
just when I reach out to touch him
younger men
represent the trivial
the unburdened and underbaggaged
unless there is the presence of PTSD
slips of thought
mainly instinct
no wondering about the formation of scar tissue
yet
a blank canvas
waiting
for me to do the scarring
the grief of loss
digs in deep
wedges between the joints
arthritis for the psyche
aching on good days
screaming “fuck you” on bad
hollowing out
the hollowed out part of you
who knew
there’d be so many
echoes
*Tel wrote a brilliant poem posted in the comments section of my poem, “Goodbye, Lincoln Nebraska” that I thought was too cool not to share. Thanks to Tel for being a good sport and an even better writer.*
Goodbye, Paducah Kentucky
with your run down buildings
lining a boring riverside.
When the floodwaters come,
even the dead try to hitch a ride
out of town.
Please visit Tel’s site for more fun and hijinks…or for just plain good writing. http://telmcg.wordpress.com/
I’ve been crying since I was eight years old. Blame Lurlene McDaniel. I do.
In the summer of 1987, I found death on a shelf at the Lee County Library in Sanford, North Carolina. I had been looking for those pre-teen romance novels, the ones where boys didn’t have naughty intentions and girls said no to drugs even in the midst of the popular kids. I had devoured these sorts of books all summer and had finally exhausted the library’s moderate selection. So, as any other little girl would do, I began perusing books for the coolest, hippest teenage girls on the cover, the girls I wanted to be.
It was time to go and I was desperate to find something to read. By chance (or was it?), I saw a really pretty blond girl, whose hair was crimped and massive, sitting with her mother. I hastily picked up the book and ran to the check out.
Later, I examined the book more closely. The book was called Mother, Please Don’t Die. Which, of course, meant Mother was, in fact, going to die (but I wasn’t a savvy reader back then so I held out hope things would end well). The book followed a girl’s journey through her mother’s dying and her own grief as well as the difficult transition from being a little girl to being a teenager. Megan made sense of her mom’s worsening symptoms as best she could as a young girl; she told me about the terrible pressure and the anger bubbled to the surface at baseball practice, resulting in her consequent suspension. After her sister’s wedding, Megan sat with her mother and they had the first truly frank conversation about death that I had ever read; Mother was not going to be there for Megan’s wedding. She was dying.
And when she did die, my heart was shattered and I sobbed out loud. I’ve been reading and sobbing ever since. I developed a voracious appetite for the dying genre. Through my middle and high school years, I learned about living with diabetes, juvenile arthritis, kidney failure, and AIDs. I felt enlightened with each page. I groped for all the empathetic artifacts in the words that were written. I began to live with all of these hardships. I felt I knew what it was like.
The year before, 1986, had been a bad year. In January, my grandfather died of lung cancer. It was the first death I’d experienced. It was scary flying from North Carolina to Arkansas, only to see a dead body, dressed in blue and not breathing in a wooden bed. Two weeks later, I sat forward with the rest of my class, eyes glued to the television as the Challenger exploded and everyone on board was killed. They sent school counselors around to speak to us about dying and grief. I felt terrible for the teacher on the Challenger, but I cried terrible, painful tears for my grandfather.
Weeks later, I randomly asked my mother if she had had any other children before my brother and me one night before our bath. She hesitated and told us she had given birth to a little girl when she had been previously married, but the girl had died when she was a toddler from cancer. I nodded and soon forgot about it, as children will. It wasn’t long before my subconscious mind kicked in and I began to wonder if I had cancer, too, and asked my mother if I was going to die. Months I asked her and for months I must have drove a stake in her heart.
Little girls don’t understand these sorts of things. I didn’t. By the time I held a copy of Mother, Please Don’t Die in my hands, I needed to read about grief. The only problem is I never stopped grieving. The reading and the grieving is a question of insignificance; no matter if the chicken came before the egg, the chicken and the egg exist.
When I was eighteen, a very receptive former teacher gave me Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt as a graduation gift. Since then, it’s the real stories of laughter and pain that have touched me the most. Into Thin Air. Devil’s Knot. Young Men and Fire. Books about the Holocaust, 9/11, surviving freak accidents, OCD, alcoholism, depression. The stories are compelling but they are most important to me as conduits for processing my own life (and grief).
In a nutshell, I read books that are too sad for other people. A book is deemed good if I cry. It is deemed brilliant if I can still sob thinking about it a year later. There are many brilliant writers out there.
Right now, The Dark Tower: the Gunslinger is impatiently waiting on my bedside stand for me to finish it. The sojourn will be short and I will soon return to form. Stacked in the corner are my standard fair, books about the Taliban, mental illness, murder, the Mormon lifestyle…all await me. I can only think greedily of the sobs I am soon to cry.
I can’t help but think I’ve made Lurlene proud.
Goodbye, Lincoln Nebraska
with your tall stalks of well-kept corn
a bright, flirty yellow
encouraging personification
and projection
on a mindless plant
I met him at the Waffle House, which was even cooler than saying
I met him on the internet
He was cute
though for a moment as I was walking up
I wasn’t sure
He had stunning blue eyes
usually I go for brown
but he was all smiles and there was little awkwardness
I think I’d finally found my stride
not thinking twice about the fact I remembered nothing from his profile
He wore a sports jacket while I wore a slinky top
encouraging him to check out my rack—he did several times
I felt a rush of adrenaline
He kept smiling
Seriously.
They. All. Come. Back.
The last two days have brought greetings from two former men who sinned against me. Greetings that were happy and affable, old friends saying hello. Fucking Air Force men. The guy who left the country without telling me IMed me out of the blue yesterday. He’s leaving Japan, but he’s not coming my way. He’s going to the one place he most dreaded going and he’ll be there for at least 3 years. And so I smiled as I chatted back because they always come back and when they do, fuck them. Air Force John, oh Air Force John with all his cuddling and fake girlfriends and shit wants to befriend me online. Coward. He wants to know how life is. I am formulating an appropriate response to convey my own heartfelt greetings to him. (Growl.)
He summons me on stage
Let’s do a runthrough
He welcomes my impromptus
the dancing grooves of my pulsing neurons that say
YES, YES, YES
with good humor
a sort of warm embrace if we embraced
co-mingled with the excitement of the next best show
coming to town
he know he’ll be in the front row
free VIP just because he knows me
always cheering at the end
pitying me at the end
wanting an encore.
I’m happy to oblige.
Your Sympathies: