Friday, April 18, 2008

I Know Everythong

*Note: After I posted the poem titled "I Know Everything," I was chatting, left-handed, with my brother while nursing Auralee. I told him to go check out the new poem I had posted, but I made a typing error. He was disappointed to find out the real title of the poem. So in his honor, I have written the poem he thought he was going to get to read.

I Know Everythong
My father was a boxer--
a not very good one--
girdled by bikini-clad women
trying to seduce him
and tank-top-clad men
trying to reduce him
to just a jock, strapped for cash.

My mother was a player--
a not very good one--
a fiddler with a g-string
always out of tune.

They married and moved
to a second-story flat
and she got a job
at the brassierie under where
they lived.

But their romance was brief.
It was difficult to tell
who wore the pant(ie)s in the family
(Of course, it's always something, I hear,
and it takes two to tanga.)

So he said, "farewell,"
and she said, "so long, John."
And that was when I was conceived.

So now you know everythong,
and boy, is it short!

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

I Know Everything

I know everything
not worth knowing.

Like the proper spelling of mackerel,
which is useless to me
because I will never write it.
Except once.
In this poem.

My brain cells are crammed with
phone numbers,
old math equations,
Beatles trivia,
one hundred "great thoughts"
Mr. Wetherell made me memorize in tenth grade.

If it's redundant, useless, and otherwise
completely irrelevant to daily life,
I'm bound to know it.

My husband (he says)
knows nothing that is
not worth knowing.

His brain cells are emptier.

He doesn't have to know, of course,
because if he wonders, he can always
ask me.

For instance,
"where are my shoes?"
"what does deleterious mean?"
"what's the name of that song?"
"how do you spell mackerel?"

(that's twice)

Maybe I think that if I hold tight
to the vestiges of life before motherhood
I will not lose myself completely.

Or maybe I think, if I remember enough details,
I will finally write a poem worth reading.

Well, it won't be this one.
M-A-C-K-E....