Marilyn’s Dirty Laundry
My mother’s closet was filled with silk.
When she was gone,
I hid there
to sleep
with her perfume.
Mrs. James’ Trousers
There they were:
Long.
Black and white.
Pin-striped.
On long legs.
With Mrs. James at the top of them
Mrs. James of the Elvis tracks in mock exams.
Mrs. James of the hyenas in the school Christmas play.
Mrs. James of the shrine to Tim Henman in the cupboard.
And my friend, the tallest in the class.
“Well you can play me!”
“Me, Mrs. James?!”
“Yes, you can play me
In assembly!
I’m writing a play”
Mrs. James loves to write plays.
“You can play me!”
Jenny shoots me a desperate glance.
She’s eleven.
“In fact…”
Oh no.
“In fact, Jen,
You’re so tall…”
Oh no.
“I bet you could wear my trousers!”
On the playground,
Later.
“I have to wear her trousers.
They’re long!
They’re black and white
Pin-striped.”
It’s next week.
Assembly.
I’m sitting in class
(on set).
Jenny’s front and centre.
In Mrs. James’ trousers.
Long,
Black and white,
Pin-striped,
Absolutely unmissable.
Unforgettable.
A true story. (Changed names).
Cold-Blooded Heart Warmers
(or, The Menagerie pt. 3)
It started with a cornsnake
named for a park back in Ashland
who escaped his collapsed tank and
vanished into the unknown.
Quite a few nights were spent lining the kitchen walls with flour
In hopes of finding a trace of Lythian,
Though no hint of him dead or living ever surfaced
The reptile life nabbed me quickly,
One moment pondering the archaic looking creature once labeled extinct
The next, I’m rearranging tank space with what little I have to spare.
Cornsnake, crestie, and python to start,
And then the dragons: the desert oranges my father brough home,
And the water lizard, Orchid green and just as fragile from the home
He’d been neglected at beforehand.
The leos top the reptiles off, with Blaze playing Mama hen;
She and Sundew spend their days piled atop each other,
In patient wait for little Ruby White to get large enough to join them.
Speaking of which, does anyone have any large tanks available?
(Hour 13)
Picture of Their First Day of Preschool
Blonde ringlets frame her heart-shaped face,
shining hair pulled off her face with a pink bow.
Her bright blue eyes are filled with laughter,
big smile swelling her cheeks.
His blonde hair cut close with a fringe
above his proud blue eyes. He is bent slightly
at the knee to reach her little shoulders and
wrap his arm around them in loving protection.
The preschoolers barely outsize their backpacks
on this first day of school. They are overjoyed
to carry their awkward bundles filled with
new school supplies.
They are ready to learn, to play, to make
new friends. They are ready to take their first
steps out of babyhood, their first steps
out into the world.
Letting them go tugs at my heartstrings
like an instrument out of tune. I want to freeze
this moment, this image in time,
forever.
Hour 10 – What is Love?
Was that love
What you felt
Or it wasn’t
The nights spent
Over calls
Losing time
Was it lust?
Feeling me
In whispers.
The Care Giver – Hour 13
I am a care giver for my aging mother.
Not much humor in that.
Bittersweet at times maybe,
frustrating, yes!
But funny not so much.
If it were anyone else’s mother with dementia
I might find humor in how this lady dresses now.
She was always a clothes horse and
conscious of fashion and her appearance.
Now she wears gym pants with a racing stripe,
A gauzy cotton Indian shirt with a nylon nightgown on top
and a big white sun hat with a blue flower on it.
Around the house.
Or an orange satin mu-mu over blue jeans
with a green cotton t-shirt over the dress
and a grey furry winter hat that she loves. Why?
To run away from home with her walker. (She’s tried.)
A backwards printed top over inside out pants
rolled up at the cuff, because “that’s how
all the girls wear them this season.” And a purse she made
that is covered in buttons and has nothing inside.
She loves to squirrel things away.
When she passes, I’m sure we will finally find
her two sets of hearing aids, her two missing
pairs of glasses, the gold coins she has always
accused me of taking, and her four missing hairbrushes.
They’ll be with assorted fancy cookie and candy boxes
that she thought too pretty to throw away.
Near my Dad’s practically new black cowboy boots
and the baseball that used to be in the toe of them.
He died in 2004.
And we can’t forget the pictures! Pictures of herself
that she swears are her mother.
Pictures of her children that she swears are not hers.
Plus perfume and lipsticks that are too old to use.
But so is she. And so am I.
And both getting older every day.
Hour Eleven: Extraordinary in Ordinary
they have curves
length
height, just the right height
shaped aerodynamically
ridged undersurface
to grip better
i slip them on
no thought about the science behind their being
my slippers
Hour Nine
Publishing
Maybe making books
Is fantasy,
All inside my head.
Putting together pretty
Words until the ink is red.
Maybe making books
Requires a bit of whimsy
To see the dreams
Contained within.
Prompt #13
I play the accordion. In a band.
Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes:
“definition of perfect pitch?”
(accordion tossed into a dumpster)
“don’t leave your accordion in the car”
(someone will break in and leave another one)
Whatever.
My friend who is also a musician tells me:
“You can make hundreds of dollars doing this. Hundreds.”
And I have.
Splitting up the proceeds of the tip jar, walking away
with 20 1-dollar bills and a beer buzz.
Playing for $500, playing for $350,
playing for drinks, for dinner, for “exposure”…
My bandmate says,
“Enough with the exposure already. If we get any more exposure,
we’ll be rated X.”
But there was that one time 15 years ago in San Juan Capistrano
where we made $950 in CD sales.
Someone brings it up every time we’re driving home
from Pasadena, from West Covina, from Fresno, from Portland.
“Remember that time we made all that money?”
There are lots of stories like that one.
Okay. Not lots. A few.
It’s good enough.
“Do You Know Your Left from Your Right?”
Hour Thirteen
Children will bounce off walls if their dance teacher tells them. (We don’t of course!)
Adolescents won’t do but so much, they don’t want to get perspired in case “dreamy” happens to pass by.
Some adults will sponsor funds for children’s tights rather than buy a pair for themselves. (Patrons are cool with me, not complaining.)
“Seasoned” adults count like this during warm-up exercises-” One, two, three, five, …eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, etc.” (We reach thirty is less than three minutes this way.)
Dance classes without mirrored walls offer the best teaching environment sometimes. The only body they see is mine and my smile at their effort is all they need reflected. DMW
PS Retired. Recently asked to consider choreographing a new piece just this week.