Miriam Stanley

SOMEONE ELSE’S…

In Winthrop, the subway runs in August heat
And, in one car, a fort of stuffed plastic bags.
A woman short and stout, shielded inside.
Other commuters huddled at the other end.

White crumpled documents
Shine like X-rays
Through translucent black.

Her porch:
Rampart of nest eggs.

Two cops walk in, stare at IRT posters.
One officer suggests,
“Let’s get lunch at Church Avenue.”

The woman in her Hefty-bag ranch house
Recedes from help,
Her face obscured;
Someone else’s mother or daughter.

The police step off at Church.

STAY IN YOUR LANE

But what if it merges?
Maybe with hers?
Or skews on another path?
Perhaps his?
What if I mind my business?
Look down, stare at my feet
And bump into you?

What if your family meets my
family where there are no stoplights,
Yield signs, or flares, what if we mix
Like marbles or, perhaps, protons
Finding electrons?

Stay in your lane.
Build up a barrier.
Make a wall,
Crown it with broken glass.

Stay in your lane,
When you running for help;
Your house on fire,
Your children screaming,
The animals dead in the fields.

Stay in your lane
When the crops rot grey with mold.
When the rivers are running their banks.
When the mountains are orange, flaming breasts.

 

                                        COVID POSITIVE DURING THE NEW REGIME

 

Two worlds    Two women    in a room.
Brown spots on four arms beneath fluorescent light
A patient and an internist – no cosmetics nor high heels – no nonsense
The patient so serenely tired. Her haunches dense on the exam chair; hardpacked under
the weight of lethargy.

          “My boss demands a doctor’s note”
                                              “Yes, yes…of course, one will be printed out.”

this office of sanitized beakers    steel instruments    a glass of elongated Q-tips individually
wrapped

The nomenclature of professionalism exchanged:
                                                 statistics   research   empirical data   control groups

Science embracing science:    one woman: a chemist; the other an MD;

their country: now a desert of ignorance      blighted edges expanding
                     think: coral, ghostly white      this sunrise of slogans and the sunset of books.

The chemist has yet no fever, but prophylactics are prescribed.

     -      Yes, the precision of double-blind experiments; of fact-checks soon to be abandoned.

The chemist drinks knowledge, peer reviewed, Truth’s elixir, a nation’s refugee at a well.

She is soon ready to crawl into bed, wrap the warmth of time around her.

    -      Another patient coughs in the next room…

 

 

OFFICE BABY SHOWER

A row of tables,
Blue paper plates,
Sugar cookies and juice,
Disposable forks,
Adults lined up, spying like children;
The man bringing in iced Devil’s food

And a woman:
A 5’2 letter D,
Talks to the head of accounting.
A sign next to them, “It’s a boy!”
Glittering its pointy edges.

I was a navy seal
Holding breath for six minutes.
Staring at colleagues sharing children’s photos
On smartphones;
Divvying up buttercream flowers and blueberry licorice,
Waving plastic rattles and bibs.

I was a gazelle hedged in by sheep –
Ears twitching, hooves kicking the dirt –
While charter schools, teething, summer camp,
And trips to Florida were compared like fruit.
It could have been farmers discussing acres.

And I was alone,
Thankful for that abortion in ’83.
The gift of Planned Parenthood,
Its affordable mercy.
When the father of fetus
Said he was, “not ready.”
Imagine the cost of childcare
With the absence of my parents.
And I was a puddle
The day I came in,
And a counselor rushed to say I could change my mind.
She suggested that I wait a few days.
“No”, I answered, sitting up, drying my eyes.
And so it was done. The problem sucked out; and yes,
I was relieved.
But let me tell you this:
Where are the kind colleagues and warm rings of friendship
When you lose something you could never afford?

 

JUAN SPEAKS:

In Belize,
The mangoes would fall to the ground,
While I played on the grass.
Their ripeness
Ignored by my auntie
Her kitchen already filled with soursop
Her village flooded with fruit trees.

That was before the plane took me to Brooklyn:
Winter jackets,
Wild schools,
No switch to hit a bully’s rump.
My mom off at a New York hotel,
Changing linen,
Changing garbage bags,
While I skipped class for the roti
Food trucks at Broadway Junction.
She tried.
Sometimes took me to church.
The Temple of Holy Apostles,
Catching the weekly Holy Ghost,
In front of the pastor from St. Lucia
While I snuck peeks at my pocketed cellphone
But I learned that beatings were a form of child abuse,
And that my uncle was wrong to use his belt,
So I skipped church,
And lost my accent like a nickel,
And rolled spliffs at my cousin’s walk-up.
I moved in.
Did wake-and-bake.
Rejected college.
But dance on the Parkway
To show my bonified roots
After attending Jouvert.

Call me a scallywag,
Roughneck,
A no-account.
At least I work like the Kings James’ Adam.
That’s saying something.

 

Miriam Stanley has six books of poetry published by Rogue Scholars Press. She is also in numerous anthologies, including the Occupy Wall Street Anthology.
She is a mental health worker, and has worked at the same hospital for over 35 years.

 

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