DAY 14 PAD Challenge
I realize I skipped posting a poem yesterday. Some prompts just don’t motivate me or maybe I’m just a bit lazy at times. I’ll post yesterdays tomorrow or maybe another day but for today the prompt was to write a doomsday poem, however you
interpret that.
“Surviving 1930 or 2130”
Your poetry curtains, loose and rusty, are held closed with stiff wooden
clothespins and you recite to the infant in a bassinette, brushing her
hair with your fingers, your nightdress dragging on the floor, frozen toe
poking out the slipper hole.
To fill that loneliness you let the baby squeeze your finger, that’s what
babies are for, all ten of them, to fill the hole. She said she loved them
but she was just being polite. Two rounds of empty dinner plates at the
kitchen table, chairs warmed up for the second shift, bits of bread and
spider legs between the slats of the floorboards. They don’t last long.
Back then the tablecloth held wonders, now just a gravy stain from years
gone by in the shape of Tennessee because you couldn’t resist flipping
Jack’s spoon after grace was said. Mama bought that cloth from the Ben
Franklin bag sale. She had wanted a swinging fan but you can’t make the
thing work with no electricity. Somehow a compact had made its way into
the bag and she had to explain that to Pops when he asked for the receipt.
He told her it was a cockamamie story—beauty has no place in our lives
now. Give all those hands something to do, Mama. But he couldn’t see those
hands had chosen for themselves, some chose good and some chose bad.
The good ones knew her love,
The bad ones knew her secret.
(photo: stock.xchng. bjearwicke)
