Super-sized Series

Conversations Part 2

 


 Getting Married by Lynn White

“Let’s get married,” you said.

I sat up quickly and 
just in time,
stopped my mouth saying, 
“After two days?
You’re going mad!”

“Why? Where’s the gain?
We’ve already said we’ll stay together,
You with me or me with you,
and care for each other,
and make love to each other.
We don’t need a piece of paper
saying Mr and Mrs.
Anyway, you don’t have a good record
when it comes to marriage.
Or so I’ve heard”, I said.

“I think I want an extra tie,
another binding, a public one.
So that your friends 
would ring you up, concerned,
and warn you not to go ahead.
And mine would try to find you
to do the same and worry
about my sanity.
But not for long.
We’ll do it quick,” you said.

“And then we can smile behind their backs
as they check our progress down the years,
amazed that we’re still together,
still like each other, still love.
And, after all, I have a much worse record 
of not being married.

So, let's get married,” you said.

First published by Paper Plane Pilots


Tell Me About Him by Jacqueline Jules 

That’s what she said.

Not “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Or “That must have been so hard.”

Instead, she asked me
to describe the person
he was before he became
someone to be sorry about.

It made me blink.
I was so used to nodding my head,
mumbling a platitude in return.

“He had my mother’s eyes,”
I offered softly. “Grayish blue
with flecks of green.”

“Lovely,” she said, touching my arm,
giving me permission to say
he coached Little League in the spring,
and cooked outside on an old grill
that came with the rented house
he shared with three college buddies.

“So he loved baseball?” she asked.

“And hockey,” I answered.
“We used to watch games together.”

“You must miss him,” she said.

I do.

First appeared in Red Eft Review


Conversations by Judy Lorenzen

The volume of the skies
last night as they prowled, cracked
and rumbled around
rattled windows—
their restless sleep talking
has everyone tired this morning,
but the morning isn’t weary.
Already the sun’s telling
the trees and grasses to green up.
The peonies and roses blushed pink and red
at all the sun’s sweet talk.
The earth is full of chatter.
Robins sing and look for worms;
grackles fly from branch
to branch, scouting and shouting—
even the trees
are having private conversations—
underground. Sending sugary messages
to one another passing off nutrients,
root to root in their confidential conversations
that keep them alive and healthy—
mycorrhiza it’s called, a mother-daughter relationship, I’m sure.

And you, Mother, you loved these mornings after rain.
Oh, I’d love to talk to you again.
I’d love to hear your voice
and your response when I tell
you about the robins and grackles flitting around,
the water pooling up in the driveway reflecting the clouds,
and the drops glistening on the grass and flowers.
You loved these mornings
after the earth showered
and washed away the worries of yesterday.
You always said the storms in life would pass,
and everything would be all right,
and you were right.
You just forgot to tell me
how much I’d miss you.


  


Cholla by Tamara Madison

Come closer, says the cholla,
fair head a sunlit haze. 
Come closer, touch 
my lovely hair – The sun does it, 
and suffers no harm. 

But I am not the sun, dear Cholla. 
I have flesh that bleeds. 

Have it your way, says Cholla, 
watching me skirt around her.
She is ready to pounce,
each needled limb bristling. 

I will touch you, dear Cholla, 
but only with my eyes. 

Good luck with that, she smiles, 
pitching toward me a ball 
of barbs for my pantleg to catch– 
extract one, others dig in deeper. 

Nice trick, I say. But I get it:
Beauty’s a dare, love’s a snare, 
don’t mess with needles 
however fair. 

Clock Radio by Joe Cottonwood

Chirpy voice, weather forecast:  
“It will be a stunningly 
beautiful day.” 
Makes a body want to rise out of bed.

My son is a drummer. Taps on the table, 
nice rhythms, but for dinner we ask him 
to stop. He’s annoyed. So we tell drummer 
jokes. Get him laughing. How do you tell 
if a stage is level? The drummer drools 
from both sides of his mouth. What do 
you say to a drummer in a 3-piece suit? 
Will the defendant please rise…

I stupidly say about Karen Carpenter: 
“She was a drummer and 
look what happened.”
Tears come. 
And we learn it haunts him.
“You’re not crazy. You’re healthy.”
“No! I’m a different person 
at school. I’m untrue to our 
family values.”
Yow.

We’re all silent for a minute.
Rose and I exchange a look. 
He’s eleven years old. ELEVEN.
If he can say that, he’s fine. 
“Okay, 
you can tap on the table.”

He pauses drumming for ice cream.
This, a boy who still sleeps with his bear.
As I tuck them in, I realize:
Yes, it was. 
They usually are.


Blood Test by John Hicks

 I’m scared.  I just want it to be over. 

It won’t take long, he says.  Then
you won’t have to come here again for a year.  

I’m scared, she says, but I’m here.  Will
the doctor do the test this time?  I liked 
the woman last year.  

Older brother leans across the chair arm 
to show her something on his phone, 
but she’s fidgeting with her hair, and 
looking across the aisle at their mother 
in the chair next to mine.  

He goes back to his phone, flicking 
through images, pauses, thumb poised, 
goes back to flicking.  It’s black, 
the same as his tee shirt.  

She watches a boy in a wheelchair being pushed 
up and down the waiting room by his mother.  
She pushes with one hand, pausing each time 
she turns the chair to return.  He cries, 
his eyes closed, arms crossed against 
his chest, and bangs his head against its 
padding.  The chair allows him 
only this movement.  

Pulling her legs up into her seat, she sits cross-
legged, palms up in her lap.  Slumping forward, 
her hair tents around her face.  Large 
yellow smiley faces on her shirt fold over 
each other.  A lab tech comes out, 
holds the door open with one foot, 
calls a name.  They rise as if in church, 
follow him inside—the girl last.  The door 
swings shut behind them.  

The boy in the wheelchair, comes by 
again, calmer, pushed by a girl 
maybe ten years old.  The chair’s handles 
are as high as her shoulders, but she spins
the chair around to make the turns, 
sometimes quickly—sometimes in surprise 
changes of direction.  He likes it.  
His head is still.  He’s looking ahead, 
trying to guess which way they’ll go.  
Another tech comes out, smiles at them; 
gestures them in.  Mother follows, 
purse at waist level, holding it closed 
with both hands. 

Smiley faces comes out with her brother, 
bounding on her tip-toes. A cotton ball 
is taped to the inside of his right arm.  
She’s skipping sideways, grabs his wrist, 
pulls on his arm, tries to swing it.  

Not that arm, Sis!  

She runs around to his other side; 
loses a flip-flop; runs back to get it.  
Runs after him to his right side; no, 
to his left.  Runs ahead to press 
the automatic door button; runs out 
as it opens.  Reaches back for him.  

First published in South Florida Poetry Journal

   
  
Octogenarian Conversations by Sharon Waller Knutson

We are updating our group email.
Hard of hearing, he sits at the computer
and I lie on the bed resting my blurred eyes.
Over his shoulder, he calls out names 
and asks CC or BCC? Bouncing off the ceiling,
my B sounds like a C. So I bellow Boy
or Cat and in no time the list is finished.

The phone rings and he answers in the office.
After an hour, he pads clear across the house
to serve me shrimp salad on a TV Tray.
Who was on the phone? I ask. He names
one of our sons. What did you talk about?
I ask. Shop talk. Guy stuff, he answers.
I prefer talking to their wives who dish
out the dessert sweet and savory.

I tell him Nial will be back as a coach 
on The Voice, a show we watch regularly.
He gives me a blank look. The boy bander
from Australia, I say. Nick Jonas? he asks.
The Jonas brothers are not from Australia,
I say. Don’t you remember Blake and Nial
doing father-son skits? He shakes his head.

We both stare at his computer screen
lighting up with balloons and confetti
as his name scrolls across the screen
as the winner of the jeopardy quiz game.
I ask him how many play the game.
Only half a million, he says. No big deal.

I did not say that, he says. Oh yes, you did,
I reply. I have a photographic memory
for conversations. I remember every word.
He admits that once a conversation is over
he wipes it from his memory like a computer
hard drive. Once it’s done, it’s done, he says.
Do you want a salad with your lamb chop?



Place Holding by Rachael Ikins
for my cousin who died at 57

By the river
I bury my face in peony-tumble.
Petals lick my cheeks, a thousand pink 
and silky tongues. Fragrances and all the conversations
I didn’t know I was having
with you

about spinach bolt, joint crepitation, 
chicken I cooked last night, murmur through my head

saved up for next time
we talk. Which is never 
often enough. Grudge matches, 
each trying to make the other give in rather 
than just to reach out. 
We could be two
stubborn fools.

I hold in both hands, kiss, 
whisper each flower’s name,  
“Jennifer.” 

Sunday, rain, wind dislocated their heads.
 Two broke, weighted with so much water. 
White, pink, tears flutter from my fingers. 

By Tuesday the river dries up.
And my voice. 

I see your face in each peony, 
petal-scatter a code to decipher.
Mud, my bare footprints trying to follow as yours fade,
and 

I listen for the murmur
that running current, our love,
to stutter 
into conversation
again.

HOW I TALK TO YOU NOW by Lori levy

Not with questions 
you can’t answer anymore,
like: What did you do today?
or Who did you see?
I don’t need to know.

I just want your smile, Ma.
All week I gather stories for you,
anecdotes to make you laugh every Friday
when we see each other on FaceTime,
me in California, you in Israel.
Antics of my grandchildren, comments,
funny phrases.  Or my own silly thoughts
about cooking, holidays, squirrels,
whatever comes to mind.
It doesn’t matter if you can’t keep it straight—
my kids, my kids’ kids, names, ages,
who belongs to whom.  Facts, details.
What matters is you can still laugh,
your blue eyes as amused as they always were,
your response the same, week after week:
It’s important to laugh and to laugh at yourself.

It’s not what we say, but how—
a flow of warmth between us, beamed
from within.  We let go of the serious,
hold on to nonsense, to the trivial,
to whatever makes us smile.
The two of us, face to face,
tickled by life.

 previously published in The Examined Life Journal.