Meet the Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

 

 

Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published ten poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014,) What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021) and Survivors, Saints and Sinners and Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022) and The Vultures Are Circling (Cyberwit 2023)  Her work has also appeared recently in Discretionary Love, Impspired, GAS Poetry, Art and Music, The Rye Whiskey Review, Black Coffee Review, Terror House Review, Trouvaille Review, ONE ART, Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review and The Five-Two. 

These poems are from her book, The Leading Ladies of My Life, forthcoming from Cyberwit.

 

I Want Something Live I Tell Santa

 

It is Christmas 1944

when I am almost three.

I open a box and find a lifeless doll

instead of a live baby brother

or sister that my parents

had been promising me for seven months.

 

I throw the doll on the floor and pout.

Why couldn’t you put what’s in your tummy

in the box so I’d have something live

to play with? I ask. We could put it back.

Mama and Daddy just laugh.

 

Feb. 24, 1945

I have to admit, when they place

the scarlet faced squalling baby

in my lap, I wish I had a puppy

instead, because he would lick

my face but when my baby sister

looks up at me with her big

brown eyes and stares at me

like I am her everything, I become

her smitten slave and although

sometimes she stinks and vomits

up white stuff on my clean clothes,

I still don’t want to put her back

where she came from.

 

Although she doesn’t attend church,

our mother always sends us to Sunday

School and Bible School in the summer.

Maybe that is why she named

my sister Judith, meaning

 "Woman of Judea” in Hebrew.

 

Judy, as we call her, bawls

all the time and I am blamed.

What did you do to make her cry?

 my father shouts. She bawls louder.

She cries because she is a bawl

baby, I say and he sighs.

Just be nice to your baby sister.

 

 

Getting the Royal Treatment

 

My grandmother is named

Anna after Anne Boleyn

and Tolstoy’s Anna Karina

which may explain why

she expects royal treatment.

 

When I ride the Greyhound

from Montana to Idaho to visit

my grandmother, the first thing

I see when the bus pulls

into the station is the blue bird

perched on my grandmother’s hat.

 

She squints in the sun, wearing

a flowered dress to match

her hat and sensible shoes.

We walk down the sidewalk

to the shoe store where she plops

down in a chair and summons

the clerk with a flick of her wrist

to bring her box after box of shoes

which she rejects as too big,

too small or unattractive.

 

The clean-shaven young clerk

obeys her command but behind

her back points to the bird on her hat

and covers his mouth to suppress

snickers, which she never hears,

but I do. I with ears sharp

enough to hear birds chirping outside

despite the canned pop music blasting

inside the air-conditioned store.

 

Even though he makes fun

of my grandmother, I buy

a pair of tennis shoes

because I know Anna

is not in the store to buy shoes.

Her closet is too crowded.

She is there to be waited on

and treated like the Queen

she believes herself to be.

 

 

Taking Care of Emma

 

Emma means whole or universal

which may explain

why my maternal grandmother

is my everything.

 

She is a heroine to me

even before I learn

of Emma of Normandy,

and Jane Austin’s Emma,

 

which is why I always stop

at her house on my way home

from school.to check on her

after Grandpa dies and she is alone.

 

One afternoon, I take a different

route where I pick up bread

at the bakery and milk and eggs

at the downtown grocery store.

 

As I reach for my pajamas,

I sense my grandmother

is in danger and needs me.

Go to bed, my father says

 

and yells: You are grounded,

as I grab my coat and rush

out into the cold winter air

and run to the end of the block.

 

There I see flashing lights

on an ambulance parked

in front of my grandmother’s

house and race to her rescue.

 

Broken hip, the x-rays show.

Nursing Home, the doctor says.

My grandmother shivers and shakes.

I’ll take care of her, I volunteer.

 

I pack my bags and move in,

And after I poach her eggs

and make her coffee, mother

shows up and I go to school.

 

When Grandma is walking,

we take care of each other

until my father insists

I move back home.

 

We hug and hold back tears.

 I don’t want to go, I say.

Your father is the boss, she says.

I want you to stay but I’ll be fine.

 

My Mother is a Marvel

 

I never knew anyone named Marvel

except my mother and whenever

I mention Marvel Naomi Marvin

was my mother’s birth name,

I am besieged with giggles

so I imagine even in the early 1900s

she was bullied and teased.

 

My mother is truly a Marvel.

meaning to wonder and admire,

as she rises in the morning

before my sister, father and me, slips

into the bathroom to apply liquid

makeup, lipstick and mascara

 

and long after we are in bed

and after my father falls to sleep,

she sneaks back into the bathroom

and smooths Ponds Cold Cream

all over her face and with cotton

balls erases all trace of color.

I never use soap on my face, she says.

 

Makeup applied to perfection,

hair ratted and secured by a scarf,

in her early eighties but looking sixty,

she sits in the passenger seat

of the bronze Lincoln as I drive

her to the specialist in Salt Lake City

after she says she can’t make out

shapes of faces. Macular Degeneration,

 

he diagnoses. She never winces

or complains of pain on the six-hour drive

but the next day she stops at the top

of the stairs carrying the clothes basket

I want to hang the sheets on the line

but my back hurts too bad, she says.

 

The general practitioner takes x-rays

and sends her home. She is still

wearing her makeup and dress

from the doctor’s visit when I find

her lying on her back on the sofa.

I can’t get up. The pain is unbearable,

she says. Every bone in her back is broken

from the bone cancer, the doctor says.

 

Should I call an ambulance? I ask

and he answers yes. But when we get

to the hospital, the administrator says:

No beds. Take her home. I bite my lip

to keep from screaming, while my mother,

the Marvel that she is, lies calm and quiet

on the gurney. A paramedic squeezes

my hand and whispers, I’ll handle this.

 

He turns to the administrator and says:

May I have a word? and they disappear

behind closed doors. The door opens

and my mother is given the bed

of a patient who is in surgery. What

if he is too weak to go home? she frets.

 

I never see my mother without makeup

until I walk into her hospital room

where she lies, hiding her naked face

and the oncologist hoping for healing

but not promising handing her chemo pills.

She refuses the I-V chemo to protect

the loss of her thick head of hair.

 

I don’t recognize the old woman

with the oatmeal mush complexion,

naked pale lips and no eyebrows.

shrinking in the sheets.

She gestures towards her purse.

Help me put on my makeup.

My baby brother is coming to visit.

 

The bones heal and with the help

of a walker, she gets along fine

for a few years until the cancer

returns and repeated chemo

weakens her heart and she falls

in the closet searching for her cat

and breaks her leg, After the surgery,

she is confused and doesn’t know

where she is and why her nurse’s

aide is missing. Terri is back, she chirps

the last day we speak.

 

She is going to spend the night

and shampoo and curl my hair.

She dies that night just hours

before the doctor arrives to

deliver the news that the cancer

is in remission again and write

the order to transfer

her to a nursing home.