Last night I was sitting on the red velvet couch in our living room
John Steinbeck in my hand and Louis Prima playing on the record player
My daughter in the kitchen boiling pasta, simmering a vodka sauce
The smell of it is surely the meaning of life
and I thought to myself, “Well this is pretty good for a Wednesday night”
The final scene of The Grapes of Wrath might be one of the greatest moments in all of literature
I think about it all the time
Like mother’s milk into the belly of a broken reed
Summer is gasping its final breath
Our gardens are hurtling inevitably to their doom
Only a few uncertain tomatoes hanging like so much unmet potential
Like backyard billboards screaming memento mori
I’ve never farmed a day in my life but I have worked a lot of retail
“Retail Scars” will be a chapter in my memoir
Today I stood in the Chattahoochee and I felt the love of Alan Jackson overwhelming me
My parents parted ways with each other when I was very young
So my dad became a single parent and took care of us
He worked full time and went to school full-time at San Jose State
But he always made sure to cook dinner
To give us baths and every night before he tucked us in bed
He would read to us
I’ve been thinking about this lately because someone asked me recently
Where my love for words and poetry came from
And I’m pretty sure it was from the nightly ritual of my dad reading to us
Busy Town, Frog and Toad, Where The Sidewalk Ends
These were the words that taught me to understand irony
Before I knew the definition of irony
Last week five skateboarders ended up at my house for the evening
Amy fried seventy corn tortillas and made tacos for them
Those young men were very polite and grateful but
It’s been a while since we’ve witnessed such ravenousness
We were so glad they came over
They kept pulling out their phones showing us videos of their tricks
And we felt like old people basking pleasurably in an audacious glow
This poem, with others, appears in Issue 26 of The Mockingbird print magazine. Featured image by Atakan Narman on Unsplash.
