Category: Aging

Fixing a Drawer

Pull the wreckage over the runner.

Unload the corn holders, spatulas, slotted spoons,

jar opener, unclaimed keys, and a three-to-two adapter.

Take time to reminisce about

the fight you had with your ex.

Attempt to squirt glue into the slot

without pulling the drawer apart.

Pull the drawer apart the rest of the way.

Sit on the floor.  Try to cry.

Quickly pour glue into every crevice

while making a plan to sell the house and move into an apartment

as soon as you get your unemployed brother to move out

and put a couple of the dogs to sleep.

As the glue drips onto the tile,

hold the sides of the drawer together.

This will allow you to feel the particle board disintegrate.

Keep the pressure on anyway while you wipe at the drips,

coating your hands and pants with a new, swiftly stiffening skin.

This is your life.

 

On my Retirement from UMSL

Back when I was a little hippie girl neither I, nor anyone who knew me well, expected me to live past the age of 25.  My career plan consisted of sex, drugs, rock and roll, dying young, and leaving some brilliant poems letting the world know how badly I’d been treated.

You can imagine, therefore, my dismay when I woke, or to be more accurate, came to, on my 30th birthday.  My plan was not working out at all.  Apparently it is harder to kill an Irish woman than I had thought.  I decided to quit trying.  I cleaned up and started looking for a life.

It was at this juncture that I got into my 1970 VW Beetle with the (as my mechanic described it) stickers and shit all over it, drove to the UMSL campus, and took a job as a word processor.  I decided to work at a college campus because the only time I had been vaguely happy to that point was during my 7 short years as an undergraduate.

For the past 24 years UMSL has been my community, and in many ways my family.  I’ve made lifelong friends and had loving, patient mentors.  Frankly, I’ve learned everything I know about being a grown up either here or in one of my many support groups.

What did I learn?  I learned to show up for work.  I learned to believe in public education.  I learned that I could learn.  I learned that I could be glaringly, publicly wrong and still live.  I learned that the smartest and most accomplished people are often the kindest and most generous.  I learned there’s no substitute for actually doing my job, no matter what kind of mood I’m in that day.  I also learned that if you bang a phone on your desk you can actually break it, but we won’t talk about that today.  Most of all, I learned there is a great joy in being of service.

These may not seem like big lessons to you, but they changed my life.

Since 1983 I have had the privilege of working with all of you and of being of service to many students.  You have given me a place to live the life I was looking for when I got here.  It has been an amazing ride.  I thank each of you from the very bottom of my heart.

 

On Picking a Man

for Amy

You’ll want to choose one with small flaws.

A painful past is good:

the memory of being overweight

or having been small enough to stuff into a locker;

a history of unfortunate eyewear,

bad skin, lack of coordination, or poor color sense;

maybe a job requiring a paper hat

to which he had to ride a bicycle with coaster brakes.

If there was success in class, it will have been in science.

If there were sports, there will have been a concluding injury.

If there were girls, they will have left him for politics, or

religion, or other girls.

Some current conditions will do:

recovering from alcoholism;

drying out from drug addiction;

suffering from a minor mental illness controllable by modern meds;

a child who won’t call;

an ex-wife who still shops with his mother;

and inability to keep his hair, or business, or waistline.

And most of all, you’ll want him older.

He’ll have memorized enough baseball stats

to be willing to abandon the game

for a Saturday afternoon.

No longer cocksure, he’ll have developed

a compensatory adroitness in loving,

more tender and reliable.

And when you are ready to unbutton yourself

you can leave the light on,

knowing he knows, as you do,

a soft spot or a bruise is a small price to pay

for the sweetness of ripe fruit.

The Former Beauty

I. Ready

The former beauty turns a few graying heads

as she enters the bar.

Her skirt is tight and she’s still not wearing underwear

because her mother told

“always be ready for him.” And she is,

though her husband hasn’t touched her in months.

She waits,

folding her hair over and over

with her hand.

II. A Coup

The former beauty is tan again this summer,

blonder, and able to get into her thin jeans, too

At the veterinarian’s office

she sits with her golden retriever,

absently stroking his head and ears.

The young vet emerges to scan the waiting room.

His gaze pauses in her direction,

a dancer suspended at the apex of his leap, and moves on.

III. On the Street

A beautiful young man sits on the curb

outside the grocery.

The former beauty thinks for a moment

he might be a boy she dated a few times in college.

Oh, but that was more than twenty years ago;

this could be his son.

Unnoticed, she watches him from her car.

He is waiting for the girl

with the blue tattoo

carelessly pricked onto the flawless skin

of her left shoulder.

IV. Shopping

The former beauty keeps her eyes down as she pushes the cart

so no one knows she is moving her legs around a longing

she no longer believes she deserves.

No one knows she’s watching

snapshots of his wrist, his shirt sleeve rolled back,

exposing a scrape from something in his life,

about which she knows nothing,

and the other thing, so palpable, impossible.

She lowers herself onto him,

but even in her mind her body is ridiculous.

In produce a boy stacks bananas quickly.

The bruises will develop once she gets them home,

once they ripen.  This boy.  If she asked him

would he run?  Stare and breathe through his mouth

in disbelief?  Fear?  Would he smile?

She has no idea what is possible any more.

She picks up avocado, palming the wrinkled skin,

and eggplant, rubbing its smooth purple.

She holds an unwashed grape in her mouth.

Maybe she could ask someone.  Casually.

Ask someone about whom she cares nothing,

what is possible?  And read the answer

in his careful pauses.

V.  At the Reception

The former beauty is seated at the extra women’s table.

Silently

she slides her thumb under the heavy necklace of rose quartz,

lifts the beads to her lips,

and marvels at the warmth left from her breasts.

VI.  At the Mirror

The former beauty pulls at the sides of her face

and realizes she’ll never wear flowers in her hair again.

No longer possible, the fair Ophelia,

mad with love and beautiful in madness.

Now she is Ophelia dredged,

puffy and pale,

no longer in love.  Or mad.

VII.  In the Yard

In her fat nephew’s cast-off shorts and tee shirt

the former beauty weeds the front flower bed.

The cool breeze brushes the sun’s heat

from the back of her neck.

The sedum is the last thing in bloom.

She cuts her hand on a dry daylily leaf,

sucks the blood.

A car of teenage boys drives by.

They honk, yell something.

She waves with her injured hand,

assumes she must know them from somewhere,

and returns to the day’s work.

Gone

Gone Gone Gone

The scenery falls too fast

from this inexorable train;

pastures, houses,

signs unreadable,

license plates unidentified.

When did they tear that down?

People, too, moving,

twist themselves out of our arms

and run;

or take the long, easy glide

from the sky

into that little pond,

there on the left,

gone.

Even our dead,

bodies stilled,

are taken,

disposed of,

gone.

Unable to hold on

our bodies rebel,

cramp,

tear

as if it were our own flesh

gone.