Posts for June 24, 2022 (page 7)

I lived through an attempted coup.
Did you?

Saw it unfold on the news,
must be true.

Heard them screaming hang pence
as they rolled out the noose.

Watched them break the glass
scale the wall, beat the cops,
bust the locks
off our democracy.

Our sovereign nation
was invaded 
on the sixth of January.

I saw it.
You saw it, too.

Call it what it was.
Insurrection.
Sedition.
Vile hatred spewed.

We’re lucky to have weathered it.
But they’re not close to through.
Now we have work to do.

First thing, let’s set the record straight.
On this fact there’s no debate.

Folks, we lived through
an attempted coup.

My ex-husband’s grandmother
Gramma Lynn
feared matriarch of their family,
served up oatmeal every morning
when we visited the summer place
in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

It was slimy, 
never hot enough,
the brown sugar–
crystalized, lumpy–
would not melt.
The raisins she insisted 
on sprinkling in our melmac bowls,  
from a box on the shelf from last year, maybe,
maybe from three summers ago.

Instant coffee–Sanka.
No matter how long we stirred it,
never dissolved.
Every morning we schemed
to find a way into town,
to get a real cup.

I truly thought she didn’t like me.
Others were cooked fried eggs or
were flipped pancakes.

Years later, well 23 years exactly, 
long after the divorce, long after
the mean letter her husband wrote,
 a month after she died,
a quaint couch, with a floral pattern
arrived UPS, with an envelope under the cushion,
no note:
a money order for ten thousand dollars.

I broke my boots in NYC,
2016.
Not the smartest first
steps, but easily
the most effective.

The price was impulsively
high—
an investment,
I determined,
for my overlooked toes.

We have aged
together
with lines on our faces
and cracks
in our soles.

I’ll keep these boots,
battered
by time and carelessness.
There’s nothing more loyal
than a good pair of shoes.

ego squeezes can’t
pass drop pack weigh worth suck gut
still stuck til breath comes

When I studied at the metropolitan university

especially true
at home with three examples
has been emphasized.

She bloomed in Buddha’s
footprints. Her seed

is known to survive thousands
of years without water. Entombed

in Egypt alongside chariots
& golden scarabs she was

scattered like christening
water on the pharaoh’s

gleaming coffin. Born
suspended in weedy

muck & thick shallow
clay, her beauty

opens to the sun—elegant
pink sunburst.

This is a 

thwarted poem,

forever derailed from the course of its genuine words.
In it I was going to relate
how at one point I put my sandals in a backpack
and shamelessly barefoot kept getting off the ship – island after island –
while on my heels the dust of cozy ports delightfully mingled.
And when – at last, yet fast – we arrived at the place
it takes nine years to reach,
a prideful cliché expert tried to shake our confidence:
“His kingdom is actually
the place you departed from,
this island is too small for your and his kingdom…”
without realizing that on my heels already
happily lived
all islands at once.

Author: Marin Bodakov
Translator: Katerina Stoykova

we children
born out of generation

we skip time like
stones across still water

we bask in glory days
gone by

we live in moments
of addenda

addenda > addendum (n.)

1794, “an appendix to a work; a thing to be added,” literally “something added,” from Latin addendum, neuter of addendus “that which is to be added,” gerundive of addere “add to, join, attach” (see add (v.)). Classical plural form is addenda. – Online Etymology Dictionary, Etymonline.com

I purchased a rope
Pliable, reliable
So many uses.