24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
The Farm
Country life
Red barn
Green grass
Sunflowers saturated
A little girl amazed
Imagination created
Desired to live here
From boring big city
Grandparents stories
Memories alive
Blueberry bushes
Radiant raspberries
Sweet to the tongue and belly
Piggytails, ponies and honemade pies
Vacations only a short time
Then our goodbye’s
Shame lived there.
Uneven, crumbly walls painted industrial white,
rusted metal shrieking when we flushed.
I used to glide on second-hand roller skates
down uncarpeted floor
that dipped and rolled
through dingy rooms.
And the cardboard refrigerator box
I called my castle.
I propped it up against cold walls, cut out a door,
and took countless meals and naps,
a short-haired Rapunzel
languishing in the dark.
Wrong side of town,
wrong side of the tracks,
wrong side of the
socioeconomic hierarchy.
I never invited anyone home.
I walked two miles to school every morning
and into the warmth of proud teacherly smiles.
My bright purple, fake fur coat
lay in mattes against my too-short polyester pants.
At recess, children trilled and grinned
through metal teeth.
I stayed inside as often as teachers let me.
Home, where the absence of my sisters rang,
where hostile faces leered through dirty windows,
where meals came in boxes from the church,
where the occasional gift from Grandma
turned us into tragic princesses.
My sisters came back.
My toenail fell off.
I bounced like a monkey
on the pogo stick my cousin lent me
and ate the Generic Sugar Snaps
that loomed in echoing cupboards.
Shame lived there,
and for two long years,
so did I.
Location
Location
Location
It was a crime
It was
The way those people
That place
Hung in the air like a stinky sock
That school
Those uppity teenagers
With sex on their brain
And disturbance in their heart
They ate kids like me for lunch
Nerdy kids, smart kids, big boobed girls
and wimpy boys
As bells rang and lockers slammed
self esteem was shattered
harsh words hung in the air
Perfectly timed pushes
A trip out of nowhere
Sending someone sprawling
Peyton Place and Days of our Lives
Who dated who
And who never got dated
Someone makes the team
Someone else has to fail
Overt commentary
About the political futures of us all
Location Location Location
School hallway
Where cafeteria smells
were not culinary
And growing up was
shame and attitude
Lower class beings
Smashed under the shoe
Of a social structure
Embedded in small children
Who grow up to be horrible adults
And misfits
Never make the grade
Knowest thou what ill there is?
Ismene, sister, mine own dear sister, knowest thou what ill there is, of all bequeathed by Oedipus, that Zeus fulfils not for us twain while we live? Nothing painful is there, nothing fraught with ruin, no shame, no dishonour, that I have not seen in thy woes and mine.
Antigone works to wake her sister:
It’s bad, honey. We’ve been done wrong.
Knowest thou what ill there is?
Clouds lowering from a sky not theirs.
The sister glowering: she wants (she needs)
a date with her boyfriend
who doesn’t like it when she’s late.
Knowest thou what ill? Only half kidding.
Because sis is no dumbo. Antigone has
a point, like any obsessed sermonizer.
Yes, ill’s gone down again (again!).
But knowest thou how ill A’s ranting is?
It razors through the sky no longer theirs,
a long broad arc from a father’s crime.
Who wants to track it to the well? Knowest thou
what ill there is? Your ill, she means. Wake up.
Umbrellas
We came early
to get a spot
We thought surely
there’d be a lot.
Yellow umbrellas
line the beach
good looking ‘fellas
hiding under each.
Scorching sand
from the high heat
impossible to withstand
without a shaded seat.
Making the trek
through the ‘fellas
just to double check
no empty umbrellas.
Admiring the sea view
disappointment unsaid.
Our eyes see blue
umbrellas ahead!
Searching through
there’s plenty of room.
We claim just two.
This day lost it’s gloom.
Your Perfect Girlfriend
Put up,
shut up,
serve up,
get over,
put out.
Not me!
See thru,
give out,
give up,
push thru,
get out.
Screw you.
by Amanda Valerie Judd
Buffeted clean
Come alive in the high wind
Waking green
The plant grown on the pier
8/5/17 10:22am
Summer Girls
We slip off into the night to slip out of our clothes,
remove our skins for the neighborhood eyes
flying through the park, her pale moon thighs,
a blur of elbows and ankles,
lip gloss and bangles, rolling in the grass.
And he was her first but would be my eighth,
filling me in the dark with his broken collarbone
his lilting lyrics and poised promises.
Her mom would sleep til the sun rose.
Then he slows and I realize
I lost my earring, my favorite earring,
huge-like-a-chandelier-Edie-Sedgwick-earring.
I comfort myself in that all possessions are temporary and then
he finds it wedged in the green and places it in my hand,
my sweaty shaking hand.
I laugh at the thought of keeping something that I’ve already let go of
Just like you.
And just like you,
I fling it from me, silver streaking through the trees
my knees are blade-stained and bare.
I left it there
just like I left you
tearing through the night like sisters, like a Tori Amos song.
All along you were the light that lead me back home
and now we’ve grown into proper women.
Still a blur of elbows and ankles, still filled with lyrics and promises.
I enjoyed my English classes at high school, but found the lure of the music rooms, all of which had pianos begging to be played, too great. I went from being ‘a delight to teach’ in my first year of A-levels (age 17) to ‘despite considerable absences’ in the second year — most of the time I was playing the piano. Happy to report that I got an A in my English lang/lit exams, and failed my grade 8 piano, go figure! ;)
I was in love
with a man
who tinkled his last ivory
in eighteen forty nine.
Waltzing through the afternoon,
mazurkaing in the morning
defeated by the G minor Ballad
swooning to every nocturne.
Duetting in Hedges' Hornpipe Rondo
rampant in Beethoven's Pathétique,
the C minor opening salvo,
flirting with the delicate flows.
Knocking out a Mozart Fantasy,
cavorting with Camilieri's Folkloristica,
rescuing Princess Natalie,
who demanded I teach her to play.
