BETH GORDON
Wednesday
I have so much to say about 1972. I have so much to say about polyester pants & polyester body suits. Multi-orange shag carpet. The Godfather. Every grownup whispering about a horse head & all that blood. Whispering between the benediction & final hymn. Whispering beneath the dentist assistant’s hand. Whispering at the breakfast table. My brother & I crumbled bacon into our scrambled egg sandwiches. My mother with half a grapefruit. My father kissing her head. His hair was as shiny & black as his shoes. His gleaming eyes. I know that 1972 is not the point. Except I was safe. I was a safe & beloved child. Yes, there were whispers. The two boys who disappeared from the school Halloween parade. Later found butchered in an empty November cornfield. Yes, there was an angry German shepherd chained to a purple school bus on our daily walk home. Yes, I inserted my body between my brother’s body & the bullies who saw the softness in his eyes. Yes, I punched a boy in the mouth & he bled & I will never forget the thrill of his tearful scream. Yes, I was just a girl, but my knees were always shredded. Bicycles, skateboards, dirt roads, 5th grade boys who didn’t understand why my brother listened to Beethoven. Why he read encyclopedias. Why he could never connect the wooden bat to the leather ball. I’m not saying that I understood. I’m saying he could never beat me in checkers or kick ball or standardized tests. But one day he led me into a bookstore & showed me all three volumes of Lord of the Rings. One day he took me to the movie theater to see Yellow Submarine. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Young Frankenstein. Silent Running. Later: Jaws & Star Wars & one day the 5th grade boys jumped him at the bus stop. I still have the ragged scar – raised & red from years of road tar lingering just below the skin. I’m not saying that I understood. I’m saying I was a safe & beloved child & the world is a dangerous place. I’m saying that in 1982 I was in a hotel bar in Wheeling WV with my father. He asked for the wine list & they brought us a small leathery menu with red ribbon for flair. Boone’s Farm Green Apple embossed on its pages with a 5-star review from the hotel’s staff. It was 1982 & we laughed like teenagers watching Animal House. I’m saying in 1992 I lived in a beige townhouse in Leesburg VA & heard Kurt Cobain on MTV. The walls were beige, the appliances were beige, the carpets were beige, my womb was failing to cooperate inside the colorless space. It was 1992 & Kurt’s dirty hair was as beautiful as a starfish. I’m saying in 2002 I was a single mother of 3 ferocious children in a 2-bedroom apartment across the square from the old newspaper building. Below us without a thermostat of her own lived Bobbi who married a roughneck in 1952 & now refused to be coaxed into the storm cellar when the tornado sirens wailed. I’m saying in 2012 my daughter told me she was pregnant & I was angry & empty of benediction. I was ready to empty the nest. I was a red & flaming scar & 6 months later I held the most beautiful child ever born. I’m saying that I tried to protect my brother but one year the snow in Japan was so deep that he & his wife had no food for a week. One year he flunked out of college & mowed lawns all summer before joining the military. One year he cried in my parent’s garage because he did not know how to change the oil in his car. He did not understand the whispered secrets of violent men. Did not know how to stop the bleeding of a split lip. Look, you see by now, don’t you? 1972 is not the point of any of this. Now it’s 2022 & on my kitchen wall a sketch of yarrow in a plastic frame that I bought for a dollar one week before my father died. I’m saying that I knew the truth about the world, but I looked away. I looked away & she was gone. On a Wednesday night. All the Halloween candy sorted in neat piles. The costumes: princess & werewolf, pumpkin & puppy, ballerina & monster: packed in an attic box. A week later the snow was whispery & fierce. She was not there to feel its sting. One year we pooled our money together. 18 quarters in hand. We bought The Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers. The King Returns. 50 years later & my brother feeds the poor from his empty pockets. My mother gave away her car. The old scar on my knee glares back at me: red as a new burn. My pollen-dusted granddaughter 9 years gone. The tattered books live in my home. The only things I could ever save.
Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in Poet Lore, Citron Review, SWWIM, Pithead Chapel, Moist Poetry, Okay Donkey and others. She is the author of several chapbooks including The Water Cycle (2022, Variant Literature). Beth is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Twitter and Instagram @bethgordonpoet.