July 4, 1989

 

What I remember

about the Fourth of July, 1989.

 

The jar of cocktail sauce

bouncing out onto the floor

when I opened the refrigerator door.

 

It landed near my feet,

glass shattering,

a small slice appearing

atop my left foot.

 

It bled little,

but left a scar.

 

Our neighborhood was raucous.

My mom’s friend from work

came to stay with us

with her two-year-old girl,

a beautiful duo of color

with wide, bright smiles.

 

While walking the block of partiers,

some teens yelled racial epithets

and later egged our house.

Those kids are probably

doing time now somewhere

for the long haul.

 

Walking back across the parking lot

from the store, just the two of us

in our cute pink and green shorts,

some men leered, catcalling us

as we neared the car.

 

I didn’t notice them,

I was a teen

in a daydream,

but mama of color

whisked me back

with a flash.

 

I’m often still in daydreams,

ask anyone I know,

but what I remember

about the Fourth of July, 1989,

 

bled little

but left a scar.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

I Wrote an Essay on Suicide (in Tenth Grade)

 

That blue guitar I had

when I was young

is gone now,

frets and strings

pulled back to another time.

 

I remember the burning

on my fingertips,

the busyness of learning

to put the tune all together,

 

and a yearning

to scale

from basement

to window

to…

 

I don’t know,

Other.

 

I wanted to send a message

from hidden hours

I’d spent writing and sketching

figures of love and loneliness

draped across my waterbed.

 

Oceans have passed

since then

and the message

remains much the same.

 

Hello. I am.  And so are you. I see you,

lily among the cranberries

in a burning coffin.

Jump, but into a place

where snow and rain are soft.

 

The tune plays softly still,

lighting matches for hope’s candle.

 

Grasp it with me, together.

We’ll need the light,

and we’ve got many miles to go

before we sleep.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

Shay’s Word Garden Word List

 

The close is a twist on the close of Robert Frost’s poem.  Yes, I had a waterbed and a blue guitar in the 80’s. 

 

Making Tracks

 

I only half-remember it.

On a wet, foggy day

William’s Restaurant

paid for me to head south

to learn the secret craft of their

signature cream pies and puffy cinnamon rolls.

 

It was early when I left,

my dreams in cargo on Amtrak,

for two days of training

by a mom with babies at home

and bruises on her arm.

 

She talked fast in between

phone calls from home.

 

Like I said, I only half-remember it now.

The bruises, though, peep through

in dark blue and green

past chocolate-peanut butter and coconut cream

—even that night

 

when they put me up

in a Motel 6, clean but cheap,

where the manager, wearing a suit,

and nearly twice my age,

dropped me off lingering

and looking for something more.

 

I shut, and locked, the door,

turned up the fuzzy drone of news

on the too-high-on-the-wall TV,

where I slept stiffly, but out of reach

of the smell of cheap aftershave, baby powder,

and the sticky sweet

of pies and rolls I would never eat.

 

Next day, white apron donned,

readying flour on my hands and board,

my training abruptly abbreviated

when they apologized: 

my instructor didn’t show.

 

Did the mirror tell her she shouldn’t go?

 

I couldn’t wait to get home,

hellish honeymoon over,

dream annulled—

 

eighteen, and not too old

to switch trains, deciding

that would be my last stroll

through dough for dough.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

Shay’s Word Garden Word List

dVerse Poetics:  Traveling by Train

 

I have only traveled by train a few times; this was one of them.

 

Harold Angels

When I was six

my grandfather, Harold, died--

though I never called him “Grandfather”

and definitely never “Harold.”

“Grampa” was a much more suitable term

for a brown cigarette smoking, Hee Haw watching,

take-your-teeth-out-and-sprinkle-black-pepper-

on-raw-hamburger-and-eat-it kind of guy.

So when I heard “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,”

I tried to picture it: all the Harold angels

up there,

singing,

angelic.

I loved him,

but if you'd have known Grampa

you'd have had your doubts, too.

© 2015 Jennifer Wagner

Prince

Prince and me, circa 1977

He was puffy and fluffy

and rarely barked.

I was in the car

that ran over him

the night he died. Six years old

and sitting in the backseat

between my mom and Shirley

as we headed out for dinner. Louie’s Chinese.

Shirley’s husband, Harry,

was the driver. A sweet, adorable man.

A diabetic whose foot later developed gangrene.

He felt terrible, of course.

I felt indescribable.

How do you say

how you feel,

your first prince’s yelps

stinging everything?

© 2015 Jennifer Wagner