Poems #9 and #10: Smash and Grab/You Are What You Eat

Again, a pretty full weekend, so I thought I would post the weekend poems together. I think I'm starting to hit a stride.

Smash and Grab

The deadbolt seems useless now;
the door is always going to be broken.
There are the muddied bootprints tracked across the floor,
the first sign of the intruder’s violent nature
(an end table thrown onto the path from the hallway to her favorite reading chair),
the brand new flatscreen she had to replace with a smaller one.
It still doesn’t cover the scrapes on her hardwood floor
from where the entertainment center fell face-first, like a bar drunk;
sometimes she still thinks she sees the glimmer of smashed glass.
The books, curiously, are the same as they always were,
but the kitchen has never recovered --
the tea kettle’s whistle reminds her of the police siren
and the pop of the toaster forces her back
to the tromp of police shoes over her life’s wreckage
and she recalls how perfectly she couldn’t meet their eyes
even after they gave her their cards, after they apologized, after they left.
Her bedroom has changed the most.
It is tight and orderly, always locked before the lights are out
because, when she pulls up the covers and closes her eyes,
she swears she can hear him pacing the hallways
looking for the next thing to turn over, the next most valuable thing
to take right out from under her.





You Are What You Eat

I don’t know how I ever liked him.
He couldn’t appreciate the taste of a mulberry plucked right off the tree --
we’d always have to walk three blocks to the corner store for
a Ziploc bag full of penny candies instead. Never mind
that the honeysuckle in our yard was free, or that the rose petals
from Mom’s garden were tart and bitter and challenging
(it was like you could taste the thorns). It was all American cheese
and Wonder bread with this guy.
I knew it wouldn’t work when we planned our first barbecue.
I raided the perimeter, he snaked through the aisles
and we met at checkout with his foods all boxed in cardboard
and mine wrapped in plastic.
When we got home, I marinated the beef and mushrooms
while he microwaved the Velveeta and dug out the ranch dip with a spatula.
Our guests arrived, and I immediately took Vera aside to talk through
her standing me up last Tuesday.
He grilled the meat and was the first one to eat it.
He drank beer with our friends, he laughed and joked,
and in bed that night he told me how much he hated them.
Right then and there I said,
“I’m breaking up with you.”