The Apostrophe Blog
Photo by Robin Adams, Merced, California, 1978.
Sometime a poem can emerge from something as mundane as the cleaning out of a cluttered desk drawer. Cataloguing the objects found, remembering the reason why (if any) a particular item—a ticket stub, a stray button, a silver-dollar coin from the 1890s—got stashed away, somehow deserving to be saved. How to then build a poem from a group of seemingly unrelated objects? What through-line could work to ties such disparities together into a kind of whole? Here in Oregon, since 1997, we have had the Death with Dignity Act as an option when one is terminally ill. There are many rules to ensure that this option is not abused; first off, it is prescribed medically and you have to be able to administer the dosage to end your life of your own accord.
My poem, “Inventory,” was published in Issue 3 of Curio Poetry way back in 2012 was grappling with these notions. In Fall 2009, this poem won Second Place in the Free Verse Category (Theme: Movies) of the Oregon Poetry Association and was later published in their anthology, Verseweavers. The narrative behind this poem was an attempt to imagine what a person might choose to do knowing that she was living out the last day of her life, a taking stock, a life review if you will. The movie in the poem showed up as a total surprise to me!
Inventory
She slides the abalone button snipped
off a beloved sweater, hockey puck
across the blotter. Copies lucky numbers
from a Chinese cookie fortune for a post-mortem
Megabucks. Bathes in ink the bonbon
tin of virgin calligraphy nibs. Tickles her throat
with the words of Aquinas on a cork:
For it is written, that wine makes glad the heart of man.
Spends her last evening emptying
a drawer. Builds a paper clip diorama in the shape
of the Taj Mahal, flying buttress a pewter lotus
bookmark. Spins, last chance Wheel of Fortune,
the circular slide rule she knew how to use,
chemistry in eleventh grade. Tucks behind one ear
the dreamcatcher’s quill and fills the puddle
under her tongue with shells sanded on the black
rock beach near Newport. Mars the corner
of her desk using the blade no longer permitted
on a plane. Scratches a subway token’s Y into the ravenous
hollow of her hand. Embroiders a drawer pull
in the knotted loops which circled her wrists,
Songkran good luck in Thailand. Fingers the ticket
stub, one final time doing the time warp,
The Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight
at the Clinton Street Theatre. Lights then flicks
match after match into the ashtray of a naked woman
pink-glazed above the words, “Florida” and “Watch
Your Butt.” Imagines what will open thanks to keys,
skeleton-bound by a fraying, jaundiced thread. Severs
her head from the snapshot taken at Christmas
when she was still denying and so smiling.
Staples it to a card, the Prayer of St. Francis—
For it is in giving that we receive, and in dying we are born
to eternal life—the priest gave her when she visited
St. Paul’s in lower Manhattan where rescue workers
slept on cots for eight months after the buildings fell.
Her last evening spent. An emptied-out drawer.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
- Publication News: “Inventory” - December 26, 2024
- Life Going By in a Blur… - December 17, 2024
- Silent Morning, Unbuttoned Thoughts Rattling Around - December 6, 2024
