LaDonnaWitmer

Mood: Stonewalled
Drinking: Diet Dr. Pepper

Honey

Farm girls take pride in slivers and dirt.
In hot blistered palms.
In the ability to run barefoot
down a long gravel drive
without wincing once,
callouses hardened like leather,
borne like beauty marks.

Each summer when the white clover bloomed,
the bobblehead flowers
swarming the backyard with sweetness,
I greeted the season by stripping off shoes,
leaving them lay where they fell
until August.

Neither heat nor humidity
nor mosquitoes could detract
from the sweaty joy of long yellow days
unbroken by school bells
unmarred by the frantic buzz
of city girls applying lip gloss and
passing judgment.

Stings were inevitable.
Honey bees working the clover for
nectar were often surprised by the crush
of my wild naked foot. Whether
offended or frightened, a stinger
was the unanimous solution.
But farm girls take pride in pain.

Feeling the prick, I’d drop to the ground
and pull up a sole for inspection.
With a dull grubby fingernail doubling
as blade, I’d scrape the venom sac free,
just like Dad taught me. Then I’d hunt
for the warrior bee, curled and dying alone
in the grass beneath the clothesline,
too far from her queen for comfort.

Do bees dream of honey when they fade?
I’m still curious. And though I didn’t want
the last thing she saw to be the face
of the enemy, unfelled by the strike
that gutted her, I’d whisper a question
unintelligible to insect ears. “But aren’t you glad
you were never a drone?”

-Lo, who finds it painful to post a poem that needs polishing.

Mood: Cold
Drinking: Diet Dr. Pepper

Body Double

I have sex dreams
about my first-grade boyfriend.

In the dreams, he appears
as neither a first-grader
or my boyfriend,

nor does he bear any resemblance
to his high-school self
that rakish punk
in Vision Streetwear
who laughed and said “Never”
when asked if he’d go out with me,
not knowing
I was passing by the classroom
at that exact moment
and overheard the whole thing.

He doesn’t look like
his current self, either.
There is no tattoo sleeve,
no vermilion mohawk,
no vestige of the sullen man
he has become.

In dreams exist
what could have been
but never was
and shows up now
only to remind me
that waking life is better.

-Lo, taking liberties with adjectives.

Mood: Accomplished
Drinking: Tea

No Good Deed

Thinking ourselves good neighbors,
we built a bench out front
for strangers to sit on
while they wait for the train.

But when I see them squatting there,
the train-waiting people,
swilling beer on my steps
and marking territory

with sticky trails of melted ice cream,
I begin to think kindness
is ill-advised.

And when a woman
who looks otherwise sane
drops trou and pisses

directly into my flower box
I wonder why we ever bothered

and what Jesus would do
with a hose.

-Lo, who does not condone public peeing.

Mood: Ponderous
Drinking: Tea
103

You’d be hard-pressed to find an adjective for her stature
other than “small”.
“Tiny” would also do,
and “short”.
Her head has never come close
to brushing the five-foot mark.
When I hug her, I bend as if to lift a young child.
If height were measured by deference, though,
she’d tower over us all.
We speak to her in low tones
nearly reverential in inflection.
But one day it is she who makes the confession,
resting frail wrists on the soft mound of her stomach.
“I’m getting so fat!” she bursts out in genuine dismay.
“I’m going to have to go on a diet.”
After the necessary moment for shock has passed,
we ply our reassurances thick and fast
“No, no, no, not fat! Not fat at all.”
And I fight back my own consternation.
If, with 103 birthdays beneath her belt,
Helen still finds her weight a worry,
what hope can there ever be
for the endless vanity
of girls who look like me.

-Lo, who has a swimsuit to think about fitting into.

Mood: Triumphant
Drinking: Tea

Tween

My sister always said she would kill herself
when she turned 13.
Suicide is a new concept to children.
Terrible enough to be unimaginably
romantic.
I took my duties seriously
as the elder sibling
and teased and teased.
She never pouted or cried,
but stiffened her small hands
and upper lip.
“When I am 13, I will kill myself,” she said
“Then you’ll be sorry.”

On her 13th birthday, I said, “Well?”
But by then she didn’t know
what I was talking about.

-Lo, wearing the awesome purple pants.

Mood: Relieved
Drinking: Agua

At the Opera House

The doors open
and we surge forward
like an invading army
swathed in taffeta and pearls,
bearing glossy programs like bayonets
(don’t underestimate the effect
of a well-placed paper cut).

Eyes set on an aisle seat,
rich old society dames
will disable you
without apology,
crushing your third left toe
with an elegant stiletto heel
that costs more than your car.

Stake your claim with elbows out,
and throw your mink stole
over four red velveteen chairs.
When the ushers bend and hiss
“No saving seats!”
fake sudden deafness and
do not meet their eyes.
(You cannot be defeated
if you never acknowledge
the existence of an enemy.)

The curtain finally rises
on tutus and toe shoes
and the audience surrenders
with the capitulation of applause.
So boorish in our rush to behold beauty,
we suddenly regain civility
when the house lights go down.

…but beware Intermission.

-Lo, so happy to be halfway through.

Mood: Aaaugh!
Drinking: Diet Dr. Pepper

So let’s be honest. This whole poem a day thing means these freshly hatched little ditties are highly unpolished. Their feathers aren’t dry. They’re all awkward and wobbly.

But I’m committed to 1 a day, and this brings me to #14. I have a full social calendar this evening, and I’ve got to get this one up now if I’m going to do it at all, but I’m so unsatisfied with it. It wants to soar so high, but it’s just flopping around in the mud right now.

Perhaps later I’ll shine it up and post it again as its better self. But for now, let’s just get on with it, bad rhymes and all…

Je t’aime

That whole bright day in Paris
my shoulder hot with a new tattoo
I wanted to tell you something but
fell short when I looked at you.

All day in the rain we walked
as if the city belonged to us.
I twittered proudly away
in my pidgin français
but let you do the math
for the Metro.

All day in the rain we walked
as if we didn’t have a pass for the bus.
My umbrella lost its spine
at least 15 times
and our shoes gave their soles
to the puddles.
And I wanted to say it
in 15 different ways
but just never got up the guts.

It was well after three
when the sun made the scene
as we stood by the Seine with a plan.
Notre Dame started to blaze
with sudden yellow rays
and that’s when our steps
slowed to silence.

All day in the rain we had walked
as if our hearts weren’t starting to rust.

Then lit up by love,
I whispered words from above
and watched you…
now man,
now melted.

-Lo, slowing into silence.