Untitled Document
aroundthecosmospoem #5
do you know an
asteroid will
come so close to earth some
forty years from now that
there’s
collision concern bloggers are
recommending ways to
avert
this catastrophe so we won’t all
go the way of the
dinosaurs some recommend places for impact
one writes “if
it comes to it we
can just send up a great shield
of recycled
newspapers paper
beats rock you see I just hope
they
don’t have scissors” I wish
I’d written that are there
copyright laws on blog remarks when it
comes to stealing
I’m shameless
© Jacqueline Jackson 2007
The man I love has a crooked finger. He had promised
the woman he was married to that he would never lay a hand on any of her
children, so when she and her daughter raged at each other and the teenager
threatened to charge at her mother with a knife, Leon punched his hand
through a wall. He got their attention. The girl dropped the knife. His wife has long since died of conditions not
related to her children. The now-grown stepdaughter, paroled from prison,
calls him sometimes. He doesn’t answer. These days he looks at his finger and I
wonder what really goes through his mind. “It would have healed
right,” he says, “but my wife sat on it in bed.”
I haven’t given him any scars. I wonder whether
that means he loved her more than he does me. Can the quiet comfort of
mature love compare to the desperate passion of the wildly inappropriate
relationships of our youth? Teresa Holton, in the following poem, has learned
that love is something greater than passion. — Carol Manley, guest editor
Proof
my finger the one I broke twenty-five years ago punching the fridge still hurts when I write a lot the knuckle joint of my right pinkie a boxer’s break they called it at the emergency room the ache when I write a lot just a reminder of who I used to be and how I used to feel so in love and so tired of struggling to prove it to someone who couldn’t believe me
Teresa Holton is a farmer’s wife, a mother, and
a teacher. Sheis working on her master’s degree in creative writing
at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Send submissions to Jacqueline Jackson Presents
People’s Poetry to poetry@illinoistimes.com or to Illinois Times,
P.O. Box 5256, Springfield, IL 62705.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2007.
