adolescence

Ever Play A Scary Childhood Game?

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

Food Contest

It was more of a game that you half-invented–
half-stole from a show called Wonderama.
You blind-folded me, told me to hold my nose
at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, and guess
which food you’d shoved into my mouth. You were my
older brother, my first friend, and I would have
followed you right over a bluff into murky water
infested with piranha. . . I still played after the hot
pepper brought me to tears, the spoonful of baking
soda left me gagging over the kitchen sink,
the cucumber slice so thick with salt that my lips
puckered like an ass. But even I had to quit
after you laid the used match from dad’s ashtray
full of cigarette butts right on my tongue.

May Was the Cruellest Month (So Far)

a dog standing on a deck
~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ 7 Comments

May Day is my brother Tony’s birthday. He was born in 1966. He died on May 3, 1987, in a motorcycle wreck. So every year at about mid April, I get the blues. On his birthday, I usually post a collage on Facebook with the message, “Miss ya, Tony.”

My brother-in-law Wes was born on May 12, 1970. He died in August of 1997 during a car accident. So every year, on his birthday, I post a photo and message on Facebook saying, “Miss ya, buddy.”

My husband Harly was born on May 17, 1969. He died in October of 1997 from a genetic liver disorder. So every year, I post a collage on Facebook with the message, “Miss ya, Har.”

Once I am passed those three rough days, I feel better. But this year, on Harly’s birthday, I got a bonus. While I was pulling weeds in my backyard, my 95 pound black lab/Newfoundland Gus was chasing my pitbull Ginger and I got in the way. Gus came running at me top speed and hit me just about head-on. It felt like a flying brick. I yelled, “Ow, ow, ow,” and wobbled into the house to get some ice.

After looking up concussion symptoms on the web and seeing that I was going to be OK, I took it easy the rest of the night. But the next morning, when I looked in the mirror my jaw hung open: I had two black eyes. I worked from home the entire week. On May 22, I took the skills test for my Certified Nursing Assistant with two black eyes. The rater, who was a nurse, raised her eyebrows and said, “Your dog did that?”

I can’t ignore the looks I’ve been getting for the last three weeks. I wonder how many people think I am in a domestically abusive relationship. Part of me feels like a movie star, skulking around my small town in sunglasses all the time. Even today, I have two thin marks left, two purple reminders of Gus’s faux pas.

Boy, am I glad June has arrived. May, you can kiss my *ss.

Funeral Dinner

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For my brother Tony: May 1, 1966 to May 3, 1987

Dad and I sat next to each other at the cemetery,
folding chairs cold and hard on that spring
afternoon. He and I were holding hands, but
his wife slid her chilly fingers in between and
how quickly I pulled away, watched the men
lower your body into the mud-soaked ground.

At the funeral dinner, Dad heard me mouthing off,
“I’m never calling her Mom again.” He grabbed
my hand, dragged me upstairs and locked us
in a tiny bathroom. “Your real mother was
an egg donor,” he said. “That woman downstairs
is your mother.” He wiped his nose on his white
handkerchief, stuffed it back in his pocket.

He left me to stare at my reflection, black rivulets
down my cheeks, hazel eyes like his, curly hair.
You looked just like our mother: light skin, bright
green eyes, full lips. And now, just like her,
you had betrayed me: here one day, then gone.

Smoking With My Brother

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

You left us at 21—brown leather jacket and
blue jeans, feathered hair parted down the middle,
freckles, the bright green eyes you got from
our mother. I never wondered if her leaving
broke you, smoking and drinking by 12,
popping pills by 13, dealing drugs in your
Windsor knot and dress pants to the stoners
at our catholic school just down the block
from home. You worshiped the Doors,
danced with the gangly arms and wild heart
of a rock star, and Dad imagined you’d run off
to join a band and never come back—like her.

After your wreck on that rainy night, we found
your box of poems, foretelling a life that would
end before you aged. “Never trust anyone over
30,” the hippies once chanted, and you would
have raised your fist right alongside them.

Dear brother, this year you would be 49, far
too old to trust—and yet, I would still follow
your hunched shoulders all the way down
to the creek slithering behind Grandma’s,
pack of lifted Winston 100s and box of matches,
I’d perch beside you on a flat rock, light
the cigs against the wind, and not yet knowing
how to inhale, but so you’d think I was as cool
as I believed you to be, hold the smoke in my mouth
as long as I could stand, the stale taste of tobacco,
cotton and paper mixing on my tongue, pretend.

I’ve Been Away Too Long–So, Here’s a Poem

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Barbie Dolls on Drugs

I was twelve and you were six, and we spent
every Tuesday night together for a year.
Your mother at Weight Watchers, your
father driving truck, we watched the Wizard of Oz
so often we knew the script by heart, and when
we tired of TV, we invented games. You had
a huge playroom with the Barbie Townhouse,
and a whole town of Barbies. One was the mother,
and one the daughter who stayed out all night,
came home naked, platinum blond hair
a tangled wreck. Mama Barbie screamed,
“Where have you been?” Daughter said,
“I don’t even know what’s going on.”
They slapped faces with right-angled arms,
and Daughter pulled on a sparkly gown
and hopped away with her plastic suitcase.

Days later, your mother asked to talk
to me, said, “No more Barbies on Drugs,
please.” If she would have been nosier, she
might have discovered I got the idea from
the live show I watched at home, starring
my teenage brother and young stepmother,
sparring, yelling, my brother’s frequent
vanishing acts. But I know now your mother
was trying to keep your dad from disappearing.

All these years later, you and I are still
best friends, and I’m both sad and grateful
for my youthful ignorance–your house was an escape
from my own, where I dropped in a video tape,
air-popped some popcorn, and sat with you
to watch a young girl find her way back home.

Exile — Poem from Suede: A Collection of Poetry

~ TheCobblersDaughter ~ Leave a comment

Exile

As soon as I showed signs of rebellion—

drinking, missing curfew, talking back—

my parents sequestered me to my

second story room where, in winter,

I could see my breath. It was an exile I came to love:

four windows, the moon peering like a voyeur

through pink floral curtains—so far—

yet close enough that I could steal its light to sketch.

In summer, a small window fan chopped my friends’

voices from the streets below, drew up that second flight,

a light breeze, so I could breathe.

When the smell of dinner wafted up the stairs,

I trudged to the kitchen where my stepmother,

sipping tea, said, No one wants you here.

Back in my room, I sketched John Lennon—

imagined that he’d written “Mother”

just for me—and Marilyn Monroe,

another girl left by her mother who made me think,

someday, I might see my name across

a marquee. But at sixteen, freedom

and fame were as distant as the stars.

So, I stole a Valium—yellow and round—

from my stepmother’s jewel box, held my breath

and swallowed it down, then lay across

my bed spread, drawing the moon.