The operator puts me on hold
while she pages him.
I put the phone on speaker,
to free up my hands
so I can try to get some writing done
while I wait.
But it’s hard to write a poem—
no, it’s impossible to write a poem
while listening to a voice that keeps asking you,
over and over again, to please stay on the line,
assuring you,
as the centuries tick by,
that your call
is very important to them.
DR. HACK FINALLY GETS ON THE LINE
He tells me the good news
is that the steroids are helping—
my mother’s getting stronger
and seems to be in less pain.
Then he tells me
the bad news:
she’s having
a severe roid rage reaction.
“I know,” I say. “It’s awful.
Isn’t there anything that can be done about it?”
“Hmmm…” he says. “Maybe we could try
putting up a NO BITING ALLOWED sign…”
And then he starts chuckling
at his own idiotic joke.
Only this
is no ordinary chuckle—
this is a piercing
Woody-Woodpecker-esque cackle
that practically ruptures
my eardrums.
I TELL DR. HACK THAT SOMEONE’S AT THE DOOR
Then I hang up
and stagger into the backyard,
trying to shake the echo of that awful chuckle
out of my head.
I suck in a breath.
I let it out.
Suck in another breath.
Let it out.
I stand here watching the sun stream
through our pepper tree’s swaying arms,
savoring the silence emanating from
the vacant house next door.
Ever since the neighbors moved away last year,
there’ve been no barking dogs,
no screaming fights,
no Lady Gaga…
Maybe I’ll dash into the house,
bring my computer out here,
climb right up into our pepper tree’s lap,
and finally get some writing done.
BUT…
The instant I step inside to grab my laptop,
the phone rings.
And wouldn’t you just know it?
It’s Roxie calling. For a progress report.
I consider coming clean
and admitting that I’ve ground to a halt—
because of my sick mom and my night sweats
and my soon-to-be empty nest.
I even consider telling her
how distracted I’ve been
by the forest of witchy white hairs
that’s just started sprouting on my chin.
Though, honestly—
how can someone barely past puberty
even begin to understand
what I’m going through?
So I don’t bother explaining.
I just tell her I’m making excellent progress.
Then I say a breezy good-bye,
hang up the phone,
and pray that God won’t strike me dead.
BUT ROXIE’S CALL HAS FREAKED ME OUT
Desperate for inspiration,
I grab one of my old journals
and, flipping through the pages,
find an entry written on Sam’s third birthday:
Today she marched in,
dragging Monkey behind her.
“Mommy,” she said, “am I three?”
“Yes,” I told her. “You are three.”
The next entry was just two days later:
This morning she said,
“Mommy, am I still three?”
“Yes,” I told her. “You are still three.”
She blinked at me solemnly,
then said, “Is my whole body three?”
“Yes,” I told her.
“Your whole body is three.”
I close the journal
and glance at my neck in the mirror.
“Yes,” I tell myself. “You are still fifty.”
Then I take a step back and peer at the rest of me.
“Yes,” I say. “Your whole body is fifty.”
EVEN MY HAIR IS FIFTY…
In case you are wondering
why I’m wearing this hat:
There’s hair in my sink,
hair in my tub,
hair on my floor,
hair in my grub,
hair on my clothes,
hair in my bed.
Plenty of hair
everywhere—
except for
on my head.
MY KNEES ARE FIFTY, TOO
This never used to happen.
My knees never used to issue a formal
complaint whenever I knelt down.
But they do now.
These days,
when I lower myself to the ground,
I’ve got more snap, crackle, and pop
than a bowl of Rice Krispies.
Yesterday, at the library,
when I squatted down
to peruse the titles on the bottom shelf,
everyone in the room turned to see
what was causing the commotion.
FOR CHRISSAKE–
MAYBE THIS IS HOW IT WILL HAPPEN:
One day,
while you and your little girl
are feeding the ducks
in the pond,
you’ll glance over
and think to yourself,
There are the old people,
lawn bowling.
The next day,
you’ll find yourself
standing amongst them,
all of you clothed in white
from head to toe,
like clusters of calla lilies
blooming on the lush green pelt
of lawn.
You’ll line up your shot,
aim the ball at the jack, and let it roll
in a sort of slow-motion
dream-sequence move.
Then you’ll glance over
and think to yourself,
There is a young mother and her little girl,
feeding the ducks.
IS THIS HOW IT WAS FOR YOU?
When you were
almost fourteen,
your body blooming faster
than a time-lapse film of a flower,
did you stroll down the street
hoping that all the boys who saw you
would be so blown away by your beauty
that’d they’d burst into applause?
Did you go from wishing more than anything
that someone would whistle at you,
to being whistled at
every now and then,
to being whistled at
so often that you took it for granted,
to being whistled at
less,
to rarely
being whistled at,
to never
being whistled at,
to wishing more than anything
that someone would whistle at you
just
one
more
time?
HOW DO U NO WHEN UR OLD?
Well, you are old
if you had trouble understanding
the title of this poem.
You are old
if you have no idea who that person is
who’s hosting Saturday Night Live.
You are old
if before you head off
on your morning run
you find yourself
tucking your husband’s
cell phone number into your pocket
so that the paramedics
will know
who to call.
SO I’M FEELING A LITTLE SAD TODAY
I spent half the morning
talking to my mother’s doctor
and her nurse and the physical therapist
and Blue Cross Blue Shield,
and the other half
talking to Samantha’s guidance counselor
and her transcript clerk and the College Board
and the financial aid office.
Now, it’s three o’clock in the afternoon.
I’m still wearing my tattered old nightgown.
I haven’t had time to brush my teeth
or make the bed
or spritz on my Rogaine
or take my biotin
or my calcium or my vitamin D
or to write one single syllable.
I’m as hollow
as an empty cave,
as flattened as a suckled breast,
as useless as an uninspired muse.
But contrary to what you might have guessed,
I’m not just a little depressed—
I’ve got a mean case
of the sandwich generation blues.
KITCHEN QUARREL
I’m scarfing down a late lunch
when Michael wanders into the room,
pulls open the fridge,
and asks me if we have any eggs.
He asks me this question even though
the eggs are right there in plain sight—
right there on the door of the fridge
where they always are,
where they always have been
for the past five years
ever since we bought this fridge
that came with the built-in egg holder.
Even so, I don’t tell Michael
that I think this is a dumb question.
I just tell him that the eggs are on the door.
But Michael gets mad at me anyway.
He says it was not a dumb question.
And I say I never said it was.
And he says well, it was obvious from your tone
that you thought it was a dumb question.
And I say it isn’t fair for him
to get angry at me for having a thought.
And he says I’m wrong about that
and I say I’m right and he says I’m wrong
and I say I’m right and he says I’m wrong,
and finally I tell him that I’ve really
got to stop now, and then he clears his throat
and says that same pissy thing he always says,
about my not wanting to concede the point,
and I say, “You know I can’t stand it
when you say that!” and he says,
“That’s because you know it’s true!”
And I’m just about to strangle him,
really, I am,
when Samantha arrives home
from her chorus rehearsal.
Thus, sparing Michael’s life.
BUT I SHUDDER TO THINK ABOUT NEXT YEAR
I mean,
what will happen
when Samantha isn’t here
to shame us into behaving like grown-ups?
Who will keep us
from tearing each other limb from limb?
Maybe we could get a court reporter
to move in with us…
She’d record every single word
Michael and I said to each other—
her silver hair pulled up into a neat brioche
on top of her head,
rocking ever so slightly, her eyes closed
in Ray-Charlesian concentration,
her quick fingers clicking quietly away
on the keys of her stenotype machine
while the ticker tape transcript,
that oozing ribbon of absolute truth,
gathered in white-looped paper mountains
around her primly crossed ankles.
Her presence in our home
would doubtless cut in half
the length of time Michael and I
spend arguing.
Whenever our fights escalated
to the you-know-I-can’t-stand-it-
when-you-say-that stage, Michael would
protest (as usual), “I didn’t say that!”
But there she’d be,
our intrepid court reporter,
to check back through her tape
and set him straight.
“Actually,” she’d say,
glancing at him coolly over the top
of her tortoise shell spectacles,
“your exact words were…”
WHERE I GET MY IDEAS
The couple doesn’t notice me,
as I pause to watch
their embrace
in the beach parking lot.
He’s younger, shirtless,
with broad cinnamon shoulders,
his slim waist circled
She’s older, in a tailored white blouse,
her French twist blonded by an expert,
her slim waist circled
by jeans the color of the sand.
They’re melting into each other
like figures in a sculpture by Rodin…
It’s seven in the morning,
so I figure this is a good-bye hug.
But now the man
takes the woman’s hand and leads her
toward a plain stucco bungalow
that borders the parking lot.
He pulls her inside,
locks the rusted screen door
behind them,
then yanks down the blinds.
But it’s as though I can still see them—
see them tearing off each other’s jeans.
I fling myself onto a nearby bench
and fever their story into my notebook…
Maybe this is a tryst
they’ve been planning for weeks.
He wasn’t sure she’d show up.
But here she is…
Or maybe
she comes to him like this
every morning,
before she goes to work…
Maybe
he’s her tennis coach,
her mailman, her masseur…
Maybe he wakes up hard thinking of her…
Maybe he smoothes
the sand out of his bed,
whispering her name
like a prayer…
She’s deathly married,
but these visits to her lover’s
dank bunker by the water,
these visits are what keep her breathing.
As long as he wants her,
everything will be okay.
He can have her as long as he wants her,
for as long as he wants,
as long as he wants
to rip off her blouse,
pull down her panties,
and do it standing up in the kitchen…
Because oh God
when he looks at her like that
he brings her back
to life…
His scent, his skin, his lips…
She needs them…
now…
now…
like the thundering wave
needs the beach,
like the throbbing vein
needs blood…
AND SPEAKING OF BLOOD
Or lack
thereof.
When I look back
on my periods
I can remember
having the distinct sensation
that my belly was full
of good rich soil.
Earth, nutrients, fragrant blood,
all of it swirled within me,
all of it thirsting
for a sprinkling of fresh seed.
BUT THAT’S NOT HOW I DE
SCRIBED IT TO MY DAUGHTER
She wasn’t quite eight years old
when she came to me one afternoon
clutching Monkey in one hand
and some tampons in the other.
She’d found them
in our medicine cabinet
and she wanted to know
what the little white tubes were for.
Ignoring the flock of butterflies
flittering in my stomach,
I swallowed hard, then spun the same
yarn my mother had spun for me—
all about
how lucky she was to be a girl
because only girls
can make babies!
And that as soon as she became a teenager
her body would know exactly what to do:
once a month, her belly would weave a nest,
just in case a baby came—
a nest that would be
a nice cozy place
for the seedling child
to grow.