Phone Call

This used to be called Phone Call. It was an emergency call to a nonexistent friend about my day. I wrote a bunch of poems in the early nineties about life as a single parent with no money, no car. I remember my mother calling once. She asked me what I was doing. I was washing the kitchen floor with a sponge. I think my mop broke and I had no money. I was beyond depressed. We ate pasta and chick peas with soy sauce and sesame oil 5 nights a week. We walked to the supermarket or the food coop. Sometimes they rode in the back of a red wagon. then we’d load it up with groceries and walk back. Cakki would sit on the ground and refuse to budge. 

 

We had fun, I think. I know there was something so good about those years. But when I wrote I wanted to write about the reality, not what I remember today. Never enough time, never enough energy, never enough money. I have not been able to publish any of those poems. I don’t think people want to know that parents are unhappy. They don’t read poems about dirty floors, shitty diapers, screaming babies. Where is the zen of that? We had fun. But there was a lot of screaming and unhappiness.  

 

 

 

Running Late         for bubba and cakki

 

 

gone

with three bags of laundry

and an umbrella

plunging through rain

 

then driving badly

to buy fruit and beer

yelling

 

at my kids

to stop

 

                   NOW

 

and the line ticks

with baggy eyes and cat food

old cigarette mouth

unwads her foodstamps

standing on one foot

 

i try to write a check

the lights tick

and i forget the date

 

today

fighting with the sun

and words

always fighting

crouched by the gumballs

their dirty legs and quarters

cakki by the joystick

and bubba by the boxes

in green sandles