Four Poems
Write Another Book! is a yellow Post-it note stuck to the bottom corner of my desktop computer. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t write tasks and to-do lists down, things tend to simmer on the back burner, and the only thing I like to simmer is Marcella Hazan’s onion and butter red sauce. True confession: once I made it, I had no desire to make any other red sauce, cholesterol be damned.
I look at that Post-it note as often as I look out my office windows to bird watch. But a Post-it Note isn’t enough, it’s only a nudge. But it helps. I’ve been revising and rearranging chapters in the fourth draft of my memoir. I registered for an online writing webinar, The Art of Reflection in Memoir, with memoir coach Lisa Cooper Ellison through Jane Friedman later this month. I’m actively writing and engaging with other writers in Writing In The Dark (WITD), the Substack Writing Intensive. I’m protecting my time, or better, I’m hyperaware of my time spent doing things that aren’t moving the needle towards that book or art. I’m sharing these details because writing them keeps me accountable, too.
How are you doing? Welcome to another edition of pARTake, where I share art, memoir snippets, poems, and other creative works. I’m sharing a few poems on this issue. The first, Where I’m From, is from a project by filmmaker, comic creator and author, Alyson Shelton, who started a Live Instagram series of the same title based on the Kentucky Poet Laureate (2015-16), George Ella Lyon, who created the Where I’m From Project in 1993.
I’m resharing this poem below since Alyson announced she’s launching a podcast of Where I’m From to celebrate her 200th Instagram Live, beginning with the unflappable Substack writer Mesa Fama, who was the first guest in the series. I’m also sharing two new poems, Scans and The Soil Beneath Us, thanks to the prompts from the latest writing Intensive in WITD, which is focused on good, clean pleasure. The final poem is Some Days I Forget, which I wrote in 2022 when I started to lean into daily art habits to sustain my new lease on life after my first cancer diagnosis.
Who’s to say I can’t include poems in my memoir?
Maureen xo
WHERE I'M FROM
I am from buttercream yellow kitchen walls,
From a General Electric avocado green stove and The Good Housekeeping Cookbook.
I am from the tiger lilies pushing up against the chain-linked fence.
(Orange, erect, between patches of urine-soaked lawn from the dogs.)
I am from the Rose of Sharon
The neighbor’s elm
Whose limbs stole across our yard blanketing pollen
Like snow
Every spring.
I am from Easter baskets and hand-me-downs,
Mary Margaret and Patrick Dixon.
I’m from the “Get that dog outta heres”
And “Be home before the streetlights are on,”
From Sit still! and Hurry up!
I’m from Three Rivers and The Terrible Towel,
Chipped ham from Bob’s Grocery two doors down and tuna noodle casseroles.
From the belt my father wielded like power
From my mother immunizing the sick and poor.
I’m from Bless me Father for I have sinned, Hail Mary Full of Grace, Jesus on the cross in every room, and candles lit for the deceased and fallen.
I’m from pride and hope—vats of scrambled eggs for dinner, Fish on Fridays.
From the woman who birthed and raised six boys and six girls, mostly alone, with no regrets.
SCANS
Seconds after the nurse tells me she's injecting the saline solution, a salty, sour scent fills my sinuses, cleaning my vein before the IV contrast medicine enters.
If you’re me you wait alone in the doctor’s office so when the news from your recent scan arrives, you have time to compose your thoughts your feelings your wtf moments even though the red brick wall you built so carefully around your heart threatens to crumble, you know in the infinite wisdom passed on through the ages and dust that while your family and friends will offer support, in the end, it's you who will hold the shield and the sword against the traumas of your body.
With said news delivered, whether good or bad, flip the coin, the door closes with a soft click, your sneakers squeak on the shiny tile lobby floor, then you’re gulping fresh air, sprinting to your car, where once inside you swipe lipstick across your pale thin lips, a shade called, Siren Red, but you renamed it, Don’t Fuck With Me.
You start the engine and blast Nickelback through your fancy car speakers as the tires lap up the highway back to your home in the woods, where your husband and dog wait patiently.
When asked the inevitable question, Would you do chemo again, you say yes, even though it nearly killed you, because you’d rather take the risk that chemo might save you than do nothing at all.
THE SOIL BENEATH US
From the rocker on the back porch surrounded by woods, a train wails in the distance, reminding us we are alone but not. We don’t deserve this pleasure, just as we don’t deserve pain, just as the scent of honeysuckle caresses that vulnerable space below our nostrils before we receive a dopamine hit in the Ventral Tegmental Area of our brains.
It’s not as if by sitting fifty feet from the woods looking through a scrim of budding chartreuse and white dogwoods that look like ghost sentinels scattered amongst the poplars, oaks, and hickory, the facts that make this pleasure possible, as the turn of another day arrives, throwing long, orangish-yellow rays across the lawn like a flyfisher casts her line, flicking slowly and methodically overhead into the lake where the fly drifts along the soft current.
This patio in the middle of the woods, where we rest our aging hips on soft, cushioned chairs, was built from blueprints and manual labor, cement and brick, where electric cables were buried to provide electricity for LED lights, a wine cooler, a refrigerator, and laundry machines to wash the bug repellent from our clothes.
Beneath the foundation, the red clay soil, mined for coal, which polluted our air, now harbors second-growth trees that cover the land once again to store carbon and purify the air, where butterflies flutter, bees buzz, and songbirds serenade.
So massive and minuscule is this microcosm of the planet that when your best friend reaches across to stroke your hand, the warmth and strength evoke a tear in your eyes, if only for this sliver of gratitude and this shared moment.SOME DAYS I FORGET
Where is my phone? I ask myself
At least twice a day.
Before I broke down and bought
Turquoise eyeglasses, I wandered from room to room
In search of my reading glasses.
Cheaters, I called them. They were invariably perched
on the top of my head.
Some days I forget words, birthdays, and anniversaries.
I sip my cappuccino, wincing at the bitterness.
No vanilla sweetener.
Some days I forget piles of sheets in the washing machine, clumped together, discovering them days later, rancid smelling, needing another wash, rinse, and spin. Then the process repeats itself.
I forget to weed the flower garden, check the mailbox, and water the topiary trees on the front porch.
Some days I forget to schedule Cooper for a groom, only remembering when his wiry coat is thick and matted.
I forget to eat lunch.
Some days I forget to say please and thank you.
I forget to say no.
And some days...some days...I forget I had cancer.If you’re reading pARTake for the first time and enjoyed this issue, please consider subscribing. Every issue of pARTake is free, though a paid subscription for $5 a month or $35 a year would be greatly appreciated. The subscription button is under Cooper’s picture below!
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I love all of your poems. Thanks for sharing. My Dad has gone through two rounds of chemotherapy. It’s not easy at all.
Love your poems, Maureen!