NewPoetry

Barbara Arenburg

.

Wet grass and a brook with a bank
we hang our toes over, talk
about some poet I saw on Insta,
and wasn’t that her just now,
carrying two grown sons,
and wasn’t that strange, seeing
as she’s so outgoing, laughing
and living life while they can’t move
a muscle, aching and lurching up
lunches in her wake?

And over a garden fence, Nancy
(isn’t that her name?) is listening,
and it matters that this picnic
table needs cleaned up. I grab at crayons
and scissors and rope and glue and a big
white plastic basket with holes
and handles for the crafty things,
tuck away for later use. All that we need
now is a getaway car to getaway in,
from the Nancy’s and Heather’s and Sue’s

that plague us, follow us to the car, ask
questions like, why is your mother
at the wheel? And in the panic
of answers, I’ve forgotten my tattoo
sleeve hanging on a bough that borders
the brook, red dragons breathe fire
and the brown background like skin—
like this is really my skin—
Of course, in a dream, it never works
out. I don’t go back, retrieve the sleeve.

Impress no one. Instead, I hyperventilate.
In the going, the sons are one daughter
I have left behind, trotting down
the garden path like a golden retriever,
happily unaware we have already turned
the bend of the winding road.
In the end, a black ball like a miniature
sasquatch, all furry and scratchy, unfurls,
expands inside a crevice of my larynx,
where, from the deep, I throw up.