As a little girl I remember the living room,
the smoked glass paneled hexagon coffee table
with the abalone ashtray
always full.
This table back then was the media center, for the TV Guide and
disheveled stacks of various magazines;
Rolling Stone, Glamour, Woman's Day, Better Homes and Gardens,
Guitar, and Cosmo-always had the cover covered,
censorship-I guess since it always said something about sex.
I rarely saw her read them, she just threw them on the stop sign table
day after day.
Along with sticky spilt drink rings and bits of green leaves,
there were tiny straws always there too,
and I could never find any tiny drinks
in the fridge despite looking
day after day.
They were collectors of clutter.
I remember taking all the magazines,
sorting them into music and beauty,
by month, bindings all lined neatly
and of course reading the Cosmo.
I also played library
with my stuffed animals before they were all
taken away due to allergies. The animals, not the books.
I got them all back, I wasn't allergic to them, it was just dust.
Back then I decided I must become
a magazine writer-No I would own my own!
I am no Oprah though, I remember her before she was
her Own woman with an over-sized magazine I have never seen
on any coffee table. Square or round.
We cannot all be famous,
but we can all become anonymous.
When I learned about air-brushing, angles, and trending topics,
I thought I must become a librarian-antiquity-my own library (with a ladder)!
Then Google and Amazon got around collecting and distributing rare
and hard to find literati-poor little she already too late.
I worked at a bookstore when I was 16.
I implemented a used book exchange,
I met a man named Adam Walks Between Worlds, I learned
floristry and barista services, he was brutally murdered.
It was not the job I sought. I did not want to check, sell, stack, dust, sort,
I wanted the words only, the cover, my name, and sex, permission
to express succinctly what I believed in me.
A better home and a garden, possibly
a new edition of Cosmo-logical, not politan.
Alas, I am only a famished writer who wants
real words in an unreal world.
Some sex up front.
Sneezes are similar to sex.
some dust is okay but no clutter
or stop sign tables
to bring me back
there believing in limitless opportunities
for those with life experience
with a loss of words,
like, Bless you.
Painting By Adrien-Henri Tanoux, Afternoon coffee (1888)
via (Christie's) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
