| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
4:00 BUYING FLOWERS A YOUNG WOMAN’S INTRODUCTION TO COLOR AND DEATH
Cass Vibbert
(Pen Shells)
My mother, when she spoke
of Tidesworth, and how all of England
stopped for tea at 4:00,
allowed the sun to cradle her eyes,
and returned to Westminster,
Munich’s summer gardens,
and Regensberg in early May.
A nurse’s cap lined tissue near
old cotton-wool and cutlery,
as soldiers reappeared with sunken eyes,
and lungs filled to capacity.
Anonymous wounds, both British
and American, reopened.
My mother, living inside a white house,
grew gladiolus and eggplant,
braided tulip stems and pressed
them between her palms,
hung wash in triangular fashion.
She waited for afternoon to smooth
into right angles and the ring doves
to come full circle, reached
for bone china cups with gold skirts --
dotted her knuckles with Jergen’s lotion,
and napped on the veranda.
J. Rod Pannek
(Poets.org)
Today I watched you pick Azaleas
from the nursery to be planted beneath
our picture window even though,
five years ago I thought of killing us both,
and then you saw the snap dragons,
but it is too late in the year
for snap dragons.
I selected the petunias with plenty of buds
and few blossoms to fill the space by our front
porch. Looking at each plant for a sign of vigor,
just as I had once examined my own body
to look for the signs of decay.
I like the potential of totally green petunias,
walking past them in the morning to pick up my paper,
day by day, I can see them pop, one by, sometimes, one.
The green and rusted cart is loaded down with colors
ready to be transplanted into our nuclear family
and home where once I took five showers a day
and spent hours making myself vomit
trying to ease the tightness in my belly.
Our yard and life are lived in and comfortable.
A soccer mom smiles at me as I taste the rosemary
from a table filled with living herbs and I think of potting
enough to keep our kitchen smelling used or maybe
just so much as it takes to cover up the odor of our
most unflattering fight when we told the kids about my
ugly side and you said you wanted my head to explode.
But soccer moms don’t get to know you well enough
to make educated decisions, so they smile at everyone.
Begonias need a new name but you bought some
for the treasure chest on the back porch where “full sun”
is an understatement regardless of what your name is.
I have known for years that when I died, on the front page,
the second paragraph would have to say “history of mental illness”
somewhere, keeping me from concentrating on the sweat that
falls onto your lips and is wiped away by my favorite tongue.
Unloading the car, I remembered I needed to turn the compost before it
got too hot and burned out the nutrients that I work so hard to save
and recycle into our yard filled with flowers and where I began to notice
four years ago this spring that I could be a father and a husband and like
my gardens, I needed care and you with your cotton-pink gloves covered
with soil could look up from digging out the daffodil bed to move the hair
sticking to your face in spring while the clouds moved in and out of our life.
Allen Weber
(Frugal Poet)
In the old-folks home I changed
bed sheets for this white lady.
She was real old, but she liked me
anyway. She’d tell bout the days
she was young and the things she’d done.
Said she wrote for a paper back
when most reporters were men.
When she was ready to sleep,
she’d reach up to hold my face
her hands would always shake
she’d pull me down to kiss my cheek.
One night she said to me something
like You know what little girl? I’m going
to die this week. Well, I didn’t know
what to say, felt like a fool standing there
smiling at her, too young to imagine
anyone could plan for such a thing.
Can’t usually tell with black people
Next day when I got to her room she was
till their breath comes fast and shallow.
But old white folks turn blue before
they die, like their tired blood stops
flowing along with their will
to be the last of their kind.
It starts at their toes
got about two weeks to live
with blue toes. As the color flows
up their feet they’ve got a week,
maybe less. When it’s to their knees
thats the day theyll pass away.
lying down I’d never seen her do that
in daylight. She hadn’t even pulled the covers
back. Then I guess she didn’t see the need
to muss up the bed. She was all dressed up
except that she wasn’t wearing shoes.
She didn’t speak. That was different,
she always spoke before. This time
she just smiled as I came close
enough to see that her feet were blue.
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