Poetry – Page 2 – Sarah Stoltzfus Allen

Lazy Mother

On Saturdays we donned our cleaning clothes,
armed ourselves with lemon furniture polish,
a mixture of vinegar and water, old t-shirts
mom deemed too ratty for regular wear
cut into rags, and music blaring through
our well used boombox.

And when the house was dubbed ‘good enough’
(though, it was always spic and span),
we made loaves of bread, cookies, pots of soup,
and fried off ground hamburger seasoned with salt and pepper.
Which we then packaged into portions
and placed in the freezer for later use.

On Sundays we woke early to start Lunch,
showered, ate peanut butter and bananas for breakfast,
then went to church for several hours.
I don’t recall a single Sunday when I felt rested
as I sat in the pew by my mother
trying not to drown in the guilt of the week.

What I’m trying to say is that sometimes,
now that I am a whole, grown woman,
I do the opposite of what is ingrained in my bones:
I let my floors stay unvacuumed while I drink
early Saturday, rain-soaked breeze and revel
in the feel of sleepy limbs waking slowly.

Two for Mirth

A pair of crows are arguing on the fence
across the street from my office window.
It’s not a big argument, full of caws
and flashing beaks. No, it’s a comfortable
quarrel of picking feathers and well-reasoned
fluffing feathers and hopping away a few inches.

One has flown and I am sad for the remaining,
sure that sorrow has come to stay.
She flutters away for a moment or two,
but she always comes back to the same perch.
Her eyes search the sky and I know if I look later,
evidence of her nervous talons will be seen on the wood.

I’ve finished my breakfast and I’m starting the second
cup of tea, consumed with numbers and calculations.
Human issues of taxes and income and lost revenues
take up the majority of my mind, but occasionally my eyes
flit to the waiting crow. She’s still there on her fence rail.
I assume she’s anxious for his return, but maybe she knows

right around 10 o’clock a sweeping black will cross my sight.
I watch him settle beside her, a peanut in his beak
and a shiny ribbon tangled about his foot.
The peanut is passed between them, the ribbon swaying pretty.
A comfortable quarrel continues, but the hopping away is traded
for gentle nudges, head touches, while spring laughs around them.

Half a Yellow Lemon and a Ginger Cup of Tea

I shouldn’t be at work today.
There are germs orbiting my aura
and I’m currently carrying an entire pharmacy in my handbag.

I have two diagnoses and my doctor asked
if I needed a work excuse.

I told her Tax Day is Monday
and that I don’t have time for strep or a sinus infection,
let alone this headache and achy muscles.

I left with a warning to wear a mask
and to stay away from people.

I’ve shut myself in my office,
closed the door and put a note on the window:
I’m infected. Stay away.

Which is why I was surprised by a quiet knock
about the time I would usually make a cup of tea.

The angel of a receptionist opened the door,
wearing her own mask, and held a pretty plate with
half a yellow lemon, a slice of buttered toast, and my ginger tea.

“I know you didn’t eat breakfast this morning,
and I figured the tea and lemon might help your throat.”

I raised my weary head as she placed it
on the edge of my desk and backed out,
leaving me to wonder what I ever did to deserve such kindness.

Wishes

When it comes right down to it,
I wish I was a bird.

I want to fly, wind in my face to the next
food source. I want to find shiny trinkets
for my nest, or colored string or someone’s
long blonde hair that a strong April breeze
pulled free from a ponytail.

I want to perch on a telephone wire,
cocking my head to and fro,
watching the humans blunder about
and arguing over what to have for supper.

I want a bird bath in a pretty garden
and some old lady that will faithfully
keep the squirrels from getting to the seed
she had her son pick up from Walmart.

I want to fly south for the winter
with all my kin and not question
if there is enough money in the bank
and enough vacation time for such a long trip.

My therapist once told me that wanting to run away
is a polite way of saying you wanted
to commit suicide. That by saying I wanted to run away,
I had made up my mind that everyone around me
was better off without me.

I believed her for a time,
but now I don’t think she was right.
I think wanting to run away is a sign you need
to take time for yourself, recalibrate your space
and mind so that you can breathe.

I wonder what she would say about wishing
to be a bird.

Arty Bollocks

Listen, I’m typically a no nonsense
kind of girl. I sit down to write a poem,
and I write a poem.
I think about the syllables and form.
I decide that dancing through dandelions
is definitely too much alliteration.
I know when to show and when to tell,
the words swirling into images for the reader.

I don’t have a specific muse,
the will to write is cultivated time
that I have carved into my daily life.
I write because it is the time to write.

But today?
Today the words don’t feel like special friends.
They feel all wrong,
disjointed and I can’t find a good enjambment
if my life depended on it.

Everything is prose that is
broken with line breaks in all th
e wrong places. And I can’t seem to
make a damn thing make sense.

If you came here looking for a good poem,
I am sorry to disappoint.

Maybe someone who feels the words
like a life force and has seen Kalliope
in her natural habitat will do a better job.
If you want directions to their place,
just ask.

A Miracle

It’s not often that there is quiet.
There is the ever-present hum of light fixtures,
a ceiling fan, the noise of whatever video
is playing on whatever device is currently
in the hands of my children,
the sound of my breathing, my heartbeat
in my ears, the tick of the antique clock
on my dresser, my boys’ voices,
a sink turning on, the unbalanced washing machine,
the thunk of a shutter that flaps in the wind,
the flushing toilet, and the clink of marbles
on the wooden marble run.

And that’s just the external input to my ears and brain.

Internally there is the ongoing monologue leftover
from childhood about sitting up straight
and how ladies do things completely different
to the way I do things, a scream of pain,
talking through the best ways to help my boys
succeed at school, me reminding myself
that my house burning down wouldn’t be the end of the world,
pictures for poems, long strings of words
that don’t make sense, filing cabinets
full of memories and things I need to remember,
what I should have said in an argument five years ago,
and for some reason a dripping faucet.

And people wonder why I want to wear noise cancelling
headphones every minute of every day,
why I cancel plans at the last minute
or don’t even make plans at all.
It’s a miracle I can sift through all of that
for this mediocre poem.

So if you see me with my headphones,
don’t ask me what I’m listening to.
I’m probably just trying to find
a moment of peace.

Easter

It would surprise me if the rapture
happened at sunrise on Resurrection Sunday.
Jesus, with all his miracles has already
done the sunrise coming back thing.
He’ll choose some other time.

At least that’s what I think.

But still, we gathered at sunrise
in our pastel, Easter glory
waiting for him to return.
The adults with dry, heavy eyes
and the little boys with chocolates hidden
in their suit pockets and the little girls carrying
their special patent leather handbags
filled with brightly colored treats and lip gloss.
The crinkle of colored foil,
slowly being unwrapped as they tried,
and failed, to be quiet while they
sat in the pews sneaking a snack.

He didn’t come back this year at sunrise
and I wasn’t surprised.
The lure of the county’s finest cooks
bringing their best breakfast dishes
didn’t attract him the last thirty years.
Why would it work this year?

Maybe we should try something else
to hasten his return.

I don’t know what would work,
but loving your neighbor and carrying on his
work of taking care of the people on the fringe
sounds like a good place to start.

Running Late and an Existential Crisis

A local man smoking a cigarette
and hocking phlegm onto the pavement,
a large pickup with a horse trailer
taking up a chunk of the parking lot,
an SUV with kayaks on the top
and bicycles on the back,
three teenage boys with pimply faces
clutching cold Ale-8-One bottles,
a red sports car with dark windows,
a mother and a crying child,
a carload of twenty-something girls
laughing and playing music I don’t recognize,

and me on my way to a poetry reading.

I pull my credit card out of the card reader
and begin pumping gas.
I don’t recognize a single person at this gas station
even though I’m smack dab in the middle of my hometown.

Here we all are, gathered for different reasons,
all with the same need,
and I wonder if this group of people
will ever be gathered in the same place again;

if we will ever know each other, if anyone
will remember my face.

Will I remember their faces?

Sweeping Superstitions

Don’t let nobody sweep under your feet, she said
as I pulled my feet up onto the couch,
placing my little girl chin on my knees.
“Why can’t you sweep under my feet?” I asked.
I want to see you married someday, my girl.

From her brown corduroy couch, I watched
as she swept her floors, a wooden handled
straw broom for the kitchen and dining room,
and a rainbow vacuum for the carpets.
She sang and swept. Swept and sang.

I was there the day the salesman sold
her the promise of clean carpets
and an easier time keeping her house in order.
It seemed to me she worked just as hard
with the rainbow as she had before.

The day I was moving out of my university dorm
and into my first apartment, she visited me.
She held out a brand-new broom and dustpan.
Don’t take your old broom into your new house, she said.
Let the old dirt stay where it is.

When everyone had cleared out of my new place,
I swept and sang. Sang and swept.
I surveyed my kitchen floors just like she had
and decided it was probably for the best
that I’d left the old dirt in my old life.

Math and Science

Love is geometry.
Or maybe it is all biology
and electric pulses in our brains.
Possibly algebra where love equals
(a+b2)/2
or something like that some other
poet has calculated to the enth degree.

Whatever it is, I find myself swirling
and so thoroughly steeped
in the euphoria, that I have no need
of oxygen or breathing or anything whatsoever
if it is not him and his overwhelming goodness.