Poem: Corn

 Corn

She always has a lot of questions at bedtime.

She asks when will be the next time that I pick her up from school
and I explain again how I work Monday to Friday now
and can’t do school pick-ups these days.

Oh.

She asks how much money I make at my job
and I tell her my hourly wage
and she ask how much that is for the whole day
and I tell her.

That’s a lot, she says.

It sounds like a lot, I say,
but it all goes to rent and groceries
and she doesn’t quite understand
so I explain that after paying for our place to live and our food
there’s no money left.

Oh, she says. That makes me feel sad.

I see the opportunity to slide in a lecture,
something about why we need to be appreciative and not wasteful
and finish our meals and clean out plates
even when we don’t particularly want the dinner daddy made
and oh yeah
I really need to use the corn in the back of the fridge before it goes bad
I should really check what we have in there
I don’t want to waste anything either

And instead of a lecture I tell her we have everything we need
and we’re doing just fine
and that it’s really time for her to go to sleep so she can wake up tomorrow.

Besides, I think to myself,
our money problems will all be solved
once my poetry career takes off.

(2021).

Poem: Earliest Evidence

Earliest Evidence

Someone asked about my earliest memory of wanting to be a writer--

when did you first know, etc., etc...

and instead of thinking about some conscious acknowledgment of writing
as either activity or vocation,
before I had any inclination of learning how to write fiction,
or effective, efficient non-fiction--

I remembered an event from first grade,
when I was literally learning how to write,
as in read and write,
printing block letters in pencil on lined paper.

Our teacher, Mrs. Deaton, asked the class what happened on the weekend.
I couldn't think of anything interesting that happened,
but I immediately thought of something interesting that didn't happen,
so I raised my hand and explained how,
on the weekend,
our kitchen stove caught fire. 

The other kids were amazed, no one pressed me for details,
and I wrote the sentence in nice block letters
with a picture of my stick figure mother
running away from out avocado green stove as it burned.

Mrs. Deaton gave me a check mark,
wrote "Good picture!" in the corner,
and we all hung our work in the hallway so everyone could see
what a great job we were doing learning how to write.

A few weeks later our family went to church,
and after the service was over,
my mom brought me back into the empty sanctuary.

She told me how another mom had seen my sentence in the school hallway,
and how that mom had asked my mom if we had replaced our burnt stove yet.

And mom explained how lying is wrong,
I guess hoping that the message would have extra force
if she said it to me in church.

It hadn't occurred to me when I wrote the whole stove thing that it was a lie.
To me, a lie was when someone asks you a question and you give a wrong answer,
like,
did you carve up the furniture with your boy scout knife?
No, not me.

As far as I knew,
the stove thing wasn't a lie.
I was just making something up to entertain others.

So if the question is,
when did you become a writer,
I guess it was around the moment
I learned how to write.

 

Poem: The Funniest Thing I Ever Heard My Father Say

 The Funniest Thing I Ever Heard My Father Say

I was around twenty
and he helped me find a used car
for going back and forth to the university.

It was a 1983 Chevrolet Celebrity sedan
high mileage
but not in bad shape
and a bargain at $500
because the owner had to sell it fast.

After a few weeks the steering went
leaving a puddle of pink fluid on the street
and requiring the replacement of the rack and pinion.

Dad did the work.
He always fixed the cars.

It was not an easy operation
as the steering had to go in an awkward place
up under the engine.

Dad,
self-taught in the art of automotive repair
during generations when cars were built
with easy and accessible structures
began ranting against the more complicated models
stemming
he believed
from American companies imitating more complex Japanese design trends.

I stood by the tool bench
passing him an occasional wrench.

He got more and more frustrated
trying to fit the steering assembly into its niche
and eventually exploded:

"Lee Iacocca
When I die and go to Hell
I'm going to find you
and kick you square in the balls!"

I didn't hang around too much longer.
He had all the wrenches he needed.

I reminded him of what he had said once
years later.
He didn't remember
and was surprised.
Several years sober by this time
he speculated about how many rum and cokes
he might have had that night.

The car ran well for several more years

until I took $500 dollars for it

when I had to sell it fast.