It’s Easy to Write a List of the Things You Are Too Reminded of
1. I hate homework.
2. Words stick to my skin like the tongue of a salty beach.
3. Standing up to read forces my cheeks to rash like a strawberry.
4. The hills of my face are heavy and produced from the genes of my mother.
5. When I get into the car there’s always an alert on the Volvo.
6. I’m forced to love love.
6. Backwards lists are too complicated, but so is love.
1. I always hate home because it means homework.
5. For the fifth time in one month my family and I regret the Volvo.
2. All my memories stray back to Grayton Beach.
4. I hate love because it came so easily to my mother.
3. “Pass me a plate,” my fingers touch nothing but a strawberry.
3. In California, there’s pretty farms filled with strawberries.
6. In California, I can escape from everything except love.
4. I’m stuck on the things I hear from my mother.
1. But hey, at least I can distract myself by sitting at home and working.
2. My first kiss was next to a beach.
5. I can’t wait to get rid of the Volvo.
5. It's too quiet and too open for conversation in the Volvo.
3. I think of my childhood nickname Strawbaby when I think of a strawberry.
2. I feel the worst on the sand, everyones too happy on the beach.
6. Is love still love when it’s bad love?
1. I remember fights in the kitchen over HOMEWORK.
4. I wish I could live the life wished by my mother.
4. I try to love but it’s all expectations of a mother.
5. “I hope you find love,” my mother says to me, I say “Pay attention to the Volvo.”
1. This poem is my homework.
3. On TV, I see a couple feeding each other a chocolate-covered strawberry.
6. I love my friends, I love my family, I love.
2. I miss the younger sand, I tire of the old beach.
2. I once held my lover's sugared palm to my biting lips on the beach.
4. I am all the will not’s of my mother.
6. What is it anyway, love?
5. Clean out the lingering reminders of the Volvo.
3. I’ve spoiled the word strawberry.
1. Maybe I like to write about my mother and love for homework.
In my mother’s Volvo, I sat against the window and stared out into the city. Wishing to be lost on
the beach with my best friend instead of drowning in homework assignments. We pass a couple
eating a strawberry, “I yearn for their love” I say, “love like that is what you remember.”
Two Halves of a Whole
I dream for the warmth
of two hearty suns
pray they love me gold,
softly bruise my skin
from their heavy rays,
thumb on each red mark;
tender but so full
when I’m fixed in time
I can feel days pass
like water dripping
through each of my palms
or like my first love
and my mother’s lips
pressing like flowers
a stamp of her heart;
I consume the past.
In the tall green weeds
a bee stings my dad
and I feel the earth;
it rattles beneath,
he kisses it nice
and I wonder what
a father’s self is
really like. Back when
hot days grew longer,
my father loved me
like wildfire
raging across grass;
I miss two forces
them loving me so,
in the blue-green heat
I miss the summer.
