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Poems from "Barbie at 50", by JBReiter
Northampton, MA US

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Poems from "Barbie at 50"

Wedded

Why can't the dog and the cat get married,
the postman to the bishop, the nurse to the queen?
In the days when mud was chocolate
we could march the egg cups down the table,
humming that universal tune.
The teddy bear and the piggy bank,
the lightbulb and the tomato.
Not all of these relationships would work out,
as we knew from the sound
of cloth tearing in another room.
Still we imagined,
in those days when peppermint was money,
that a bit of lace thrown over
the cat's spitting head would make her beautiful,
and a dropcloth would stop the parrot quarreling
with his mirror mate.
We were dizzy with weddings,
even when the books fell to the floor
inky and torn, face-down like bridesmaids
with their mascara running.
Why do the things that were sold together,
the obvious salt and pepper,
rows of rolled socks like dull neighbors,
always go missing?
So we married the glove to the mitten,
in those days when morning was bedtime,
when lunch was rice flung in the street
after the tin-can fugitives,
we matched the boot to the baby's shoe
and no guests came.

###

The Opposite of Pittsburgh

A garden hose fell in love with a footstool.
It said C'mon baby, opposites attract.
We belong together, like fudge and onions.

The footstool wasn't happy in the mud.
It settled down, like it had been settling down
all its life.
Its tapestry skirts got lopsided and wet,
like a Victorian lady visiting the poor
who sits down where there is no chair.

The hose couldn't stay wound, it was that excited.
Flowers sprouted from the sides of the house
where the water sprayed, and nowhere else.

People whose feet were tired kept coming out to the garden
and poking the cabbages, seeing if they'd bear weight
like a sofa. "Why can't you be more like a sofa?"
the footstool complained.

The garden hose felt love in all its arteries.
Big spurts of love, knocking over small dogs,
drenching every daddy's barbecue.
The neighborhood began to eat their hamburgers raw.

Stories like this always end with a garbageman.
The footstool drove away on the junk truck, headed
for Pittsburgh
or a field that was the opposite of Pittsburgh,
just one long loop of day and night weather
and no one to keep it awake with love
running out the soles of their shoes.

###

Leaving Olympus

When this first awful happiness passes, when love
is a sleep and not a thirst,
when each expects the other's daily miracle
and we're no longer finding allegories in the toast
that one burns too long, the other not enough,
then it might be safe to be admired
by the junior gods coming up at parties
to our brilliant routine,
the gods of small temptations like moonlight
in a wine glass or the silver teeth
of a new zipper, an opening
into a voice that says it won't be like the others.
But the gods are all the same, we've learned that
each time we fried eggs in the palace of desire,
ripped the new tape off old boxes, hung our sad, soft clothes
side by side behind another peaceful door.
The gods never get past the first burn
of their ice bodies on each other's tongue,
the tearing that turns them back to flesh.
How they would pull us into their museum,
their arms broken off, reaching to be adored.

###

Description: These poems are selected from the chapbook "Barbie at 50" by Jendi Reiter, which won the 2010 Cervena Barva Poetry Chapbook Prize. Visit http://www.cervenabarvapress.com to order a copy.

Photo Posted: Feb 28,2011 Photo Viewed: 262

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