Storyteller of the Week

Betsy Mars

 

Betsy Mars and beloved dog Loki

Betsy Mars was born in Connecticut but currently lives in the suburbs in Southern California where she works as a substitute teacher, cat wrangler, and an editor for Gyroscope Review. Her father was a professor and her mother was a social worker, which contributed to her tendency to overthink and over-empathize. Her father’s work meant that they moved several times during her childhood, though California has been her primary home. From ages 4-6 her family lived in Brazil and these two years left her with an abiding love and appreciation for language(s) and other cultures.

Betsy is a prize-winning poet, a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, a small press publisher, and a photographer. Her photos have been published in Rattle (as the Ekphrastic Challenge prompt), and as cover images for Spank the Carp and Redheaded Stepchild. Her writing has appeared widely online and in numerous print anthologies. Her chapbooks and small press publications (Kingly Street Press) are available on Amazon. In addition to her chapbook collaboration with Alan Walowitz, she recently worked with artist Judith Christensen on an installation in San Diego which is part of an ongoing exploration of memory, identity, home, and family.


Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

I’ve been in awe of Betsy Mars poems since I first read this heartwarming poem on Your Daily Poem.

Entangled
for Loki

There you were behind the chain-link fence
in the cold concrete stall,
and I guess you thought
I was the one you’d been waiting for.
You jumped up so I had to notice
the movement, then the shine
of your eyes. I had come
for someone else,
but it was clear I was mistaken.

You knew right away,
but I wasn’t ready to commit.
I kept thinking of you,
returned the next day
hoping you hadn’t been taken.
I took you home just like that,
ran a bath. You let me touch you
and I felt no fear. Together now,
we washed away the shelter grime
and I trimmed the tangles. I trusted you
and you became my home.

Every time I read a Betsy Mars poem I want to cry or laugh, or both as in the poem about Betsy’s dog Loki who died at the age of 13 of cancer in 2020. Whether she is writing powerful poignant poems about love and loss or humorous poems about life, she writes in her own unique signature style.

I am proud to publish these poems of Betsy’s that I love.

Love Languages

My father told bawdy jokes and limericks,
bought me the entire set of World Book encyclopedia,
spawned a love of basketball, drove
our low-slung Camaro through deep puddles
for the joy of the splash though the waves
crashed over the windows, drowned the engine.

We walked home sheepishly to my mother's fury
and a flurry of dry towels
and reprimands.

Still, it was my mother who heard my stories, danced
with me in the dark when I was So Tired of Being Alone
with Al Green, wept when the door to the surgery closed
and I lay anesthetized upon the table. She was the one
outside the bathroom door who joined me,
screaming in empathy, as I peed in post-catheter pain.

Banking on it

We’ll go to the bank in the morning.
The branches are kitty corner, at Main
and Elm. Remember? The accounts
have a long series of numbers,
arranged in columns.
 
I’ll take you first thing in the morning.
We’ll get your money; don’t worry.
I’ll be secure. There’s no hurry.
The funds are there;
you’re not yet spent.
Leave it for the night, sleep tight.
In the morning you can eat
peaches and cream
to your heart’s discontent. It won’t be long
and we’ll both head to that vault, but for now
 
a morphine drip to help you slip
into the calm breathing of the night;
your last in skin.
Now I dream of you, my father,
and put on your orphaned socks.

The Night You Left

—for my mother

I came to watch and wait as you lay
unspeaking, mother-sitting duty.
You in your purple parachute jogging set,
propped up on pillows on your queen-sized bed.
I noticed you had squirreled away food
in the prednisone-swollen pouches of your cheeks —
not for winter, which was just then passing —
but one last attempt to please my father
as he spooned in breakfast before he left for a meeting.
I didn’t know then all the signs
I would later learn from hospice pamphlets,
but my mind burned on high alert.
I changed your Depends, heavy with urine,
made note of the darkness, figured
your kidneys must be slowing down.
We were silent all day. I bathed and clothed you.
I never said the words I love you.
I sprayed your wrists with cologne,
called my brother to come, kept you home
until you were ready to leave on your own.

Seeing Shrek at the Drive-in During a Pandemic

Ogres are like onions, and I am too,
taking off the outer skin for a couple of hours
to be close to kin. I peel my gloves off
 
after the ticket taker hands me a menu
for the snack bar, edge away as far as I can
from the van they wave me next to
 
which is spilling laughing children. The dark descends.
Shrek slouches before a rising moon, Donkey nearby.
I sigh in recognition, alone in the swamp
 
heat of my enclosed car, shutting out
the unmasked.  In the car to my right
my daughter behind glass, windows up.
 
We communicate by phone and gesture,
with thumbs up and heads bobbing
to the soundtrack of her childhood.

I am trying to atone, for all my layers—
the rawness, the cutting, the weeping—
of the onion, the irritants which sear.
 
In the castle a dragon slumbers,
ready to fire up its scorching breath.
At night I assume my true form, hope
 
that I might be loved anyway;
by light of day I spin candy floss from spider webs
and balloon whatever frogs come my way.

“Seeing Shrek at the Drive-In during the Pandemic” was published at Sky Island Journal, “The Night You Left” at Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and “Banking on it” at Anti-Heroin Chic.