The Poetry Marathon

Saturday mornings
we piled into the den
TeriDebbieBethieJimbo
on our blue shag carpet
in front of the console tv
all with overflowing serving bowls
of cereal… Captain Crunch, Trix
Pebbles (fruity and cocoa)
and my favorite, Freakies.
We watched early morning cartoons
until the good stuff came on…
H.R. Puffinstuff, The Buggaloos
Sigmund the Sea Monster…
these were the best times
to be a quiet little sister.
The Teri of us doted over me
made sure I was full and happy and clean
before Mom and Dad woke up.

On summer vacation
we were in the pool
as soon as we saw
their feet on the stairs.
We played in the pool until
we couldn’t hide our pruny
fingers and toes
and Mom pulled us out
to sit on our towels, wet and exhausted
on the blue shag carpet in the den
in front of the console tv
cereal bowls in our laps
watching Saturday afternoon cartoons.

He doesn’t keep things forever.
Not pets nor people, Christmas tree bulbs

Nothing is an heirloom to him
but his mirror image
and triple length self publications.

He’s a tricky throw awayer
with his darting eyes, his clever lines

“Oh, you didn’t want that, did you?
It looked so old and worn.

I threw it out for you.”
He doesn’t keep things forever.

He’s a tricky throw awayer,
slight of tongue and quick hair check
all but himself out the door.

Dogs and cats and comfy chairs…
a woman called a fish.

Twenty one 16×20’s nailed to posts.
Below each, piles of flowers
three feet, four feet high,
stuffed toys, teddy bears, notes,
signs, posters, prayer candles.
In the neighborhood streets around,
children of all ages chalking
pictures and notes to their lost friends…

It is all too soon.

They are hollowlost, ripped out.
They are still outside their bodies
from shockwave grief.
Still, they come to pray
to leave things teachers
and little kids might like to have
to write how much they were loved
how much they will be forever missed
to light candles hoping for angelsong…

I take the pictures.
I make the videos.
I write the words.
I look at them all in my quiet.
Make decisions about the when
and where of them.
The ones no one but I will see
have a long building deep in the background,
a building with giant boarded up
windows all around.
A building that can’t possibly hide
the atrocities inside. The horrors inside. I know.
They know. The world knows.
But, I can’t bring myself to show it.
I can’t bring myself to show it.
I look at them more than
a few times a day still.
We all know
and I don’t want to show you.

We smell the flowers
from the bottoms of the piles
purifying, rotting in the heat
under the thick layers above them.
All the children smile
in their giant photos above them.
The teachers smile
in their giant photos above them.
It is raw and poignant and unmentionable.
It breaks our spines.
The town crawls on all their fours,
limps, frail… irreparable.

The blown out, deadly silent windows scream
all boarded up deep in the background…

I will not show it… I will not show you…

I remember you. I remember your squishy lap, and you always having a warm towel when I played in the sprinklers. I remember snuggling my face into your soft neck. I remember you singing to us on the phone, and in the videos on the phone, and at our house.

You smiled to me, and tickled my feet when you swept underneath my high chair. You let me play wildly, splashingly in the bathtub. I remember you reading to us from whatever book we brought to you,  however many times we asked. I remember you reading to us on the phone, and in the videos on the phone. I remember you sent us fun boxes of cookies and chocolates and t shirts with turtles and flowers on them from your Maui home.

After the blast, when everything stopped, and everything was gone, I still remembered you. I don’t remember who you are, but I remember you loved me, and I was safe in your love. If you can, please come find me. I would like to have you again. I miss you.

I still love you,
D.

From her small, oak sided trailer, pavement space 27, she sells hardbacks and sunflowers, wild seeds in the off season. She rises from behind her knitting, hangs in on a nail to her right to show this thing or that. Her cheddar cheese smile and wine glass eyes tell secrets she’s not really hiding anyway.

If she likes you, she’ll share a little pinch from her sachel, pour tea, and read aloud from her favorites while you’re there. You will stay all afternoon…

Cooing Cooing, he
died last year from that bad flu.
Church says I need to
marry again, but I have
vegetables growing

fruit trees bursting out,
a hog, goats, chickens and eggs,
a roof and a floor
and milk for my two babies.

I barter for the
field work and the heavy work.
Mama does the laundry.
Ruth in the Old Testiment
did it. I will do it, too.

Cooing Cooing dove
in the kitchen rafters say
Love is just a hard
day’s work for the right reasons.
He died last year, but I lived.

We call out to you
the angels under our tongues
speaking in a language
it has been said that you know.
We have been told that you know.

We lay on our face
waiting for your responses.
We lay on our face.
We push mud into our ears.
We grind sand into our eyes

hope our souls are wrong
even when we know that aren’t
when the sky spits out
terror, hate, dead small children…
you don’t speak angel’s language.

Go back to where men
created you. These tongues
are ours. We speak the
language of angels now. We
speak and answer our own calls.

Still light outside, the
darkest evening of the year,
we watched tall trees bow
over boarded up windows
hiding their alphabet soup.

6/25/2022

In Water

When I was a child
I had a dream that we
were fishing off the
rocks near the Queen Mary in
Long Beach, where the colorful

starfish could be pulled
up and played with, held to the
sunlight,  shimmery.
glistening  in my little
girl hands under the hot day.

Sitting in the car
with a cheese sandwich and a
candy and a drink,
our whole station wagon rolled
quickly off the rocks, right there

sinking under the
surface  with me still inside.
I swam out the door
in the direction  of the
surface, the direction  of

the light from above.
My little legs kicked hard to
save myself, and the
half breath I grabbed just before
going under was getting

stale. Chicken fencing
covered the ocean as far
as I could see or
feel. Only my fingers broke
through the holes. Not even my nose

could make it above
the wrippling water and that
deadly, silent wire.
I watched the sun in KY last
moment, wriggling my fingers

in the air to Mom
and Dad screaming on the shore.
I let go and filled
my little lunge, crying wet
into wet, tears to ocean.

I let go of it
and in doing so, I woke
coughing and crying
and fighting for my last breath
fighting for my little life.

Even then, I knew
this was a message to take
into my life, to
remember when the time came…
Breathe everything in, and fight.

That time came yesterday.

6/26/2022

Okay! It’s 7:45pm here on Maui. I have done all I can to prepare.  Now, to sleep, and wake up at 2:30 to start at 3:00. See you all in there!

Alll my best to all of you!

Me ke aloha nui loa 🌺

Elizabeth