Eighty-four degrees, Late April
It’s weird as Halloween: storm-dirty clouds that
haven’t thundered yet, sun boring through like an
ember landing on something you wouldn’t think
flammable. Humid air you’d shrug at in July, but
exotic now. And so I‘m remembering my mother’s
mother and her thick, black hair—not a strand of
it silver or white until her seventies, but even so a
true nana: silky floral dresses, the tender, talcum-
pale flesh at the top of her arms. It was impossible
to know when she was actually angry. So often she
was—and how she worried! Loved us, but believed
mostly in medicine: in her migraine injections, in
a codeine-laced cough syrup our doctor prescribed
me for bronchitis the same summer the family left
for Cape Cod and had me stay with her because I’d
flunked the Trig Regents and needed to make it up.
She insisted I swallow a double dose on my way to
retake the exam. I was seventeen, lacking the heart
and courage to refuse. Today is like that: drugged,
fevered, hot and rank as the gym crowded with kids
from three towns around, seated in sweaty rows,
whispering formulas to themselves like prayers, as
fans blew papers off desks. I’m back there today, in
this odd quiet. I’m writing down just enough to pass.
Voting
is a form of prayer, I think. You write down what
you want and put it in someone else’s hands. If
enough other people want it, it happens. So God
becomes counting it all up, becomes everybody
speaking at once. Yesterday afternoon I watched
young men reel in a dozen striped bass easy—fish
big as my arm—from the Hudson River. Young
men, silver and black prizes held high in plastic bags,
walking to their cars grinning, past a line of us out
on Piermont Pier watching. You’re only supposed
to eat a half pound of bass from the Hudson per
month, but people don’t seem to care. The clouds
were a worn-out gray—sky and river duller than
the bass—and today’s about the same, except for
this cold, steady rain. I went out to vote today.
I was thinking of those young men and their fish.
Were they still fishing, black hoodies pulled up over
their heads, fat raindrops pocking the river? Were
they casting their lines, casting their ballots, all that
bass taking their hooks? I always want to remind
them about the PCP’s and know they’d only laugh.
It’s a fat paycheck, no damn deductions. The stripers
are running: free dinner! The cold air’s spiced with
changing tides and woodsmoke. Everybody’s happy.
My House Sits Right On The Road
Things are bad but my fingers keep working.
The day’s torrents keep ebbing and flowing.
Come stand next to me and you’ll hear surf
discussing two beaches at once. It echoes at
the bottom of the hill we all climb with each
day’s close, when I pick up the olive oil in its
heavy flask to drizzle in a pan, or when I mix
biscuits with my fingers, wedding ring slid
into my pocket. I make salad, easing in salt
and vinegar bare-handed, lifting the leaves
of butter lettuce like pages of an ancient book.
This stings my cuticles. So I’m not surprised
someone wants to shut me up. When I put out
a Vote For Joe sign last time, little stars and
stripes attached to it with packing tape, my
neighbors smashed it, flags and all. I’m old.
I could tell you what happened before, which
hurts me pretty much every day. I think the
U.S. Capitol dome is beautiful as any named
full moon. I poke the chicken breast to see if
it’s done, wash my hands, peer out my kitchen
window. My house, older than this country,
sits right on the road. So far, it’s a quiet night.
Things are bad but my fingers keep working.
Christine Potter lives with her patient husband and two spoiled cats in a very old house in the Hudson River Valley. Her poetry has been in Rattle, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The McNeese Review, Does It Have Pockets, Thimble, Consequence, and on ABC Radio News. Her time-traveling YA series, The Bean Books, is published by Evernight Teen. Her latest poetry collection, Unforgetting, is on Kelsay Books.
facebook: /christine.potter.543 | instagram: chrispygal
