Author: rgardner2 (Page 4 of 7)

Mayflies

They can spend years underwater.

Their presence indicates a healthy environment.

As they go unnoticed while they watch over their waters.

Their bodies are of a different age.

A glimpse into the past.

They tell us so much.

As adults they live for one day.

They don’t have to debate what they’ll do with their,

One perfect day.

But they’re seen as a nuisance.

A distraction to drivers.

Bodies to sweep off the street in the morning.

If it were me

I wouldn’t want my one perfect day

To end under someone’s tires.

Little Girls

Oh,

The horror it is to be a little girl today.

Where not even other little girls like you,

Not like other girls.

Doomed to be unable to enjoy things,

Without the cruel and sharp laughter of those above you.

Forced to watch as others get torn apart around you.

Then turning and tearing another little girl down yourself.

Who taught them to hate themselves so heavily?

Who taught us to be so critical of them?

Why do they feel the need to grow up so fast?

I can barely remember her,

The little girl I was.

I wish she loved herself 

Half as much as I love her.

Suppose Poem

Suppose 

I never get my house in the woods.

That has the clover lawn out back.

With wooden beams in the kitchen to dry herbs from.

And a little fireplace in the living room.

I never get to see the glinting of golden gates in the clouds.

I won’t go fishing with my Father again.

I won’t go on another walk with my Mother.

I won’t get to have a late night talk with my little sister again.

I have you.

And suddenly everything else fades.

If I don’t see the gold of the gates in your eyes 

Is it really worth it?

Sometimes I wonder if my father is scared of me. Of the daughter he’s created.

If he’s scared of how I’ve gone from a little girl with ringlet curls and a holey smile to a woman with a pierced nose and a loud voice.

I used to run up to him to show him the frog or snake or other slimy thing I had cupped in my hand. Now I don’t run to him for anything.

When we watch a movie and I cringe at the man on screen I wonder if he cringes at me. As my voice gets loud and I define all the faults I see in that man I wonder if he thinks I’m talking about him.

When we watch a movie and I see the way he looks at the women on screen I cringe. The comments he makes and the way he views them make my stomach shrink. I hope he doesn’t think of me that way.

I used to want to view the world the way he did. He’d look up at the stars and I’d look too. I’d try to find what he was staring at. Now I hope I never come to be as negative as him.

I hate the fights I have with him. We both raise our voices and I refuse to back down. Something he taught me. I keep my emotions in check. I explain as well as I can. But he never seems to get it.

He never seems to understand I am the woman on the screen. I am the woman he doesn’t say goodnight to. I am the woman he whistles at on the street. He doesn’t understand we are all one. That his actions have consequences.

My voice dies down as I realize he won’t get it. Not because he can’t. Because he refuses. Some primal or subconscious piece of him won’t let him understand. He wouldn’t like the man he was if I was right.

So instead I end our conversation. I look at this man who used to cause such adoration in my chest and now I can only conjure a feeling of a mild disappointment. I have more questions about him than answers. 

How can he do this to me? He raised two daughters, how can he still not understand? Is he really that thick headed? I know he’s not. He understands so much, why does he refuse to understand this?

Where did my father go?

Mac and Cheese

My feet ache as I shift my weight from the fake tiles of my kitchen.

Our green clock seems to be mocking me as it flashes closer to midnight.

Though my hair is still dripping from my fresh shower I still feel the phantom of grease from work on my skin.

I hate smelling like pizza.

I stand above the oven and my hand stirs what’s in the pan absentmindedly.

The sound of me hitting the pan to shake the sauce off so I can stir the noodles breaks the silence every few minutes.

The house seems to hum around me.

I can hear Hannah’s tiktoks playing softly from the couch.

I can’t help but yawn. 

I cringe at the feeling in my right knee.

I forgot my brace for my shift.

It doesn’t agree with me after I stand on it for twelve hours.

Soon enough the smell is too good for my rumbling stomach to ignore.

I decide the sauce is cooked enough.

I strain the pasta.

I divvy it up into two different bowls.

Mine is piled much higher than Hannah’s.

This is my real meal today.

If you can call it that.

I always give her a little more sauce than she needs.

I bring her bowl to her in her spot on the couch.

She snuggles deeper into her blanket as she takes it.

She puts her phone down and waits for me to sit in my place on the couch.

What are we watching tonight?

In the haze part of me knows this isn’t real.

But I can’t make myself care.

Her laugh echoes around my head and the island we’re on.

Her smile is soft like the petals on the flower in her hair.

The color of her eyes eludes me.

I wish I could remember.

Her laugh is loud like thunder and I laugh with her.

Before I know it I’m on the ground holding her shoe.

I’m on one knee.

As I lift her shoe to her I realize the real question I’m asking.

She smiles and tells me yes.

I’ll marry this girl I just met. 

I wake in a soft haze.

My lips still seem to tingle with her cherry chapstick.

I’ll miss her

This is the Anniversary poem.

I’d like to mark 

The last time I stepped foot into the COA library,

Where I sat and learned to hide myself away during my first semester at college.

The first day I met Sophia and Dawson,

Who have kept me rooted in place, both at UNE and in the pleasure of everyday life.

The day I realized I was starting to fly,

My father looked at me and told me, “Go, spread your wings. Fly.” before he rolled the window back up and left me there.

I didn’t believe I’d ever be able to.

It took me months to learn how,

I kept falling on my face.

But soon, unbeknownst to myself, I was flying.

I wish I knew when I’d learned how.

Rhyming scheme poem I picked the a-b-c-b-a type

My Mother’s voice is loud on the phone.

My sister is texting me her side of their fight.

I’ll be asked to pick a side which neither will like.

They’re much too unruly for this time of night.

This is why I hesitate to call home.

Little Things

My eyes are glazing over

The small screen in front of me hasn’t given me anything interesting.

The dining hall is crowded and loud.

The weight of my assignments makes it feel impossible to stand up straight.

I should be working.

I let out a sigh

My mind drifts to all the things I have to do.

I can feel my head leaving my body. 

I’m no longer here.

Rachel

My head whips back to my body 

I look up at Sophia.

She has a camera pointed at me

She smiles as she takes a picture.

I love you

She puncuates it with a little air kiss.

I tell her I love her too.

And I’m back. 

At least for a little while.

The Writer’s Dilemma  

I stare at the blank page in front of me.

The white glow of the screen seems to be blinding.

A black cursor sits small on the page.

It blinks at me.

My hands hover over my keyboard.

My fingers flex but never touch the keys.

My entire personality has flown out the window.

Who am I?

What do I find interesting?

What do I have to talk about?

What do I have to add?

Have I ever had an original experience?

I feel as blank as the page in front of me.

As pure as though I was just born.

I’ve had no experiences.

I’m not interesting.

I close my computer.

When writing this poem I had been playing around with this idea for a little while now but hadn’t had a chance to really flesh out what I wanted to say. I feel like I had a lot more to say so stripping it down to the bare bones was really hard for me. My technical first draft is sitting in my notes app which is more a rant than a first draft. So what I have written here is a more polished version where I pulled all the things I liked from my rant. Endings are very hard for me but I really liked the way I moved the ending around for my final draft of it. For the second draft I tried to see what was missing so that I could add to it. From the way our class discussions have been going I think maybe trying to find things to take out may have made it fit a bit more but I really like how the end result turned out. It was absolutely a challenge trying to know what I needed to zoom in and focus on but I think I got what I was trying to say across to the reader.

 I decorated my book to be more traditionally feminine which I think works very well for the context of my poem which is about the patience and, in some ways, quiet violence of the women I’ve known. Originally I wanted the cover to have a field of flowers on the front to be a serene picture. But I ended up doing an ivy boarder for the front cover and a pattern on the back which I wanted to make look like lace. The ivy at the front reminds me of the ivy a lot of younger people putb in their rooms as decoration. The lace on the back was supposed to be a callback to a bit older of a generation. There was also a bit of a generational theme in my poem and I wanted that to be looked at a bit more and I thought the two different images would be a good way to show that. If I had a bit more time or resources I may have got an actual piece of lace to put on the back of the book. I think using images to re-enforce themes in the poem is the way I would like to use them for my final artists book.