Two poems in a row with selfies, making up for lost time :)
Awkward
I. Teenage Daughter
How dare you roll your eyes
if I bust a move to the radio
in the kitchen as I am cooking your dinner.
Who gives you the right to
comment on my gray hair
or the wrinkles on my hands.
I shouldn’t feel ashamed walking
through my own damn kitchen in a bathing suit.
I don’t deserve to be looked at askance
when making a wreath of
tinsel on my head at a recent birthday party.
I was a Saint Lucia on winter’s solstice
in Sweden with candles in my hair,
I was Lakshmi in India at the
Diwali festival of lights
bearing clay lit pots.
Awkward?
Lets talk after you push a few babies
out of your vagina,
I’ll consider cowing to you once your
toddler throws a tantrum in the grocery store,
once you wonder if you should still wear
a bikini because of your stretch marks
(you should).
II. Son
When my grown son
glanced at my phone I’d left
on the counter, the screen showed
a text to my honey that said,
I love your _ock
with emojis of an eggplant and a rooster.
He has no idea the courage
it took to use the C word,
(note, I can’t even use it here),
I didn’t want to make it worse
by qualifying my courage.
I remember laying awake
hearing my parents
alternatively fight and make up,
making love.
I both strained to listen
and wanted them to stop.
III. Almost Stepson
Due to a technology glitch,
for a few days my fiancé
and I unknowingly share texts
with my partner’s teenage son.
The youth reads my words:
I am so fine to pick him up,
my hesitation was only because I want to
be naked in the house with you
and have my own teenage overwhelm.
The text was embellished with emojis
of an eggplant, a peach, a volcano.
To which my partner replied
I will put my eggplant in your peach and then volcano.
This almost stepson tells me about nudes
being passed around school
the way baseball cards used to be.
He isn’t phased, his feelings weren't hurt,
I am still blush/cringing.
IV. Dear New Reader
I didn’t want this to be the first poem
my two new subscribers read,
yet suspect they will be fine.
They are both artists and tender hearted.
This is the poem that has been
waiting to be written,
three weeks gestating.
It is clunky
and won’t fit in an anthology,
can’t be shortened for a billboard.
Life rarely enjoys such tidiness.
It has been said you should feel
embarrassed when making art.
A better way to say it is
you should be asundered
undered, wounded, wondered
when creating.
Then mended.
V. FaceBook
I am remembering my poems
are posted to my personal FaceBook page.
I sometimes decide certain ones
are not PG enough to be alongside
cats riding on vacuum cleaners
and Mother’s Day brunch pictures
and delete them as soon as they are published.
But lately I have heard
FaceBook was involved in swaying elections
and know they buy our metrics so we
can be targeted for advertising.
Then there are those pictures
you get tagged in by other people
when you have had one too many
or didn’t hold in your belly.
Yet, they look amazing.