Nobody Go Blue, and: Rubber Necking, and: The Blended Family

Nobody Go Blue

Who meant to be a teenage mother, but ten days
without the pill, and there you have it. A new life. I didn't mean
to starve the baby in utero. Brown rice, pot, cigarettes, no way
she could have come out fat. So she's not so tall. It seemed

the war would never end, four dead at Kent State, rage
everywhere. I wanted to make a baby, replace a few dead
with my own live child as if a baby could be a blank page
anything could be fixed on, everything revised. Who would've said

it could turn out o.k. in that dark apartment? No idea what to do
but feed her each time she cried, rock her in the chair, stuff her full.
Try not to roll over on the baby, don't drop her, nobody go blue
in the night. Listening for her breath, I felt that soft spot on thes kull,

rising, falling in the city night that looked like dawn. Even the belly button
alarmed me, its plastic, yellow staple threatening to come undone.

Rubber Necking

I didn't mean to have so little to say about my mother
but talking about one's own mother is like going
behind your own back like rubber necking
your own life like walking across the stage with a run

in your stocking like being in the city with the glass
elevators breaking like forgetting to sew on a button
like stepping out of the photo like going off
to make the coffee at the right moment like pulling

your own tooth like planting bulbs upside down
like taking down your own building like singing
when the choir stops and there you are in the quiet church
sunlight gleaming in each window pane

and only your voice ringing out fa la la fumbling the words
pretending you meant to do exactly what you did and no regrets

The Blended Family

I didn't mean for us to break up over a plate of spaghetti.
But I saw it would be the plate of spaghetti.
It was in front of my daughter and she hated spaghetti.
No chocolate cake unless you eat your spaghetti.
The two tiered cake was dark against the red spaghetti.
I went upstairs and wept because of spaghetti.
You were downstairs waiting for her to eat her spaghetti.
Watching her watch her plate of spaghetti.
How could so much get lost over a plate of spaghetti?
A woman and a child and a mound of spaghetti.
A woman a child and a lover weeping because of spaghetti.
Your son had already eaten his spaghetti.
And so it went. My daughter would not eat spaghetti.
Two women in love, three children, one plate of spaghetti.
Though the chocolate cake was succulent, she would not eat the spaghetti.