Poetry Jam Week 1

So there's this blogger NanU who is regular reader here. I have no idea what interest I can hold for someone living in France and being a scientist and just immersed in beauty all the time, but maybe she feels the same way about Ohio I do about France? That seems horribly unlikely.

She does a weekly project called Poetry Jam, which used to be the Poetry Bus, but I like Jam better because it makes me think of strawberry jam, which I want right now on an english muffin with butter. Instead of this horrible energy shake I'm sucking down. Which makes the inside of my mouth taste like chalk. Chocolate chalk. I'll get used to them again I guess. When I'm dead. I haven't tried to write poetry in years, but scheduled stimulation is a good thing, and this is basically a virtual writers group, which is way better than a physical writers group where you have to look people in the face and lie to them. So sorry, from now on you have to deal with poems.

This weeks prompt is Birthday. Like every other assignment I've ever had, it was due to be up today, so I'm writing this right now, no editing or thought, and I apologize. Cause it's not good. But like going to the gym, you just have to keep doing it till you get better.



Tuesdays are my birthday.

I used to only celebrate my birthday
Once a year.
And it was important and special,
My very favorite day.
Which meant that he could mess it up
With one phone call.
It could be horrible.
I could be dumped.
Broke
Sick
Unloved
Mad
Depressed
Working
And then that day would be lost,
I'd have to wait another whole year
To try and make up for it.

July 10th 1979 was a Tuesday
The internet told me that, pulled it up quick.
I don't remember that day
But I imagine my mother swollen and straining
In a walk up apartment in Akron
With thrift store couches and homemade curtains.
Water boiling on the stove
Women with braids drinking cheap wine
While Mom moaned on the bed
And everyone waited to see my crown.
When I drive through Akron now
That steel stretch of highway signs
For streets I don't recognize,
I think about their life there, and
Don't understand it.
I wasn't really there for that day.
I wouldn't exist for 3 more years.

Every Tuesday I am here though, now.
Tuesdays exist, every week,
scheduled and planned,
by ancient glass eyed men
With beliefs about clockwork.
They are going to be there and so am I, so
I can't possibly fuck up every Tuesday.
Every Tuesday cannot be bad.
He cannot call me every Tuesday.
Tuesday I remember
"This is the day that ancient men wrote down
I would be born" and
This is the day they first saw my head
And my hair
My nose
My eyes
All mine, and nobody else's.
This is the day I made my first noise.