The Woman Who Rescued A Kitten I Later Adopted
She's in L.A.
I'm in Boston.
We phone each other every week
but we've never met.
She argues that point.
"It's the universe, dear. We've all met."
Twenty minutes in and we are telling secrets:
She once snorted coke with a guy twice her age.
I was caught at fifteen stealing socks from a Sears.
"Maybe we can meet next year," I say.
"How about Miami?"
"Hold on,” she says while letting out the dogs.
I listen to her world. The mockingbird
trills in her lemon tree. Her crippled
German shepherd reprimands the huskies.
Static.
She’s in the garage.
"What about the Serengeti?"
"Brilliant," I say. "We'll meet on safari of all places."
"Don’t forget mosquito nets, okay?”
We could shorten these calls if we wanted
to avoid a string of interruptions —
the cries of the feral cats she feeds,
the calls waiting that beep in my ear.
But I need to tell her
things:
I had my eyebrows tattooed on
a business trip to Vegas, and Friday
is fancy coffee day.
And she needs to divulge her latest
plan to sell the house, and hubby’s recipe for Eggs Oscar, how they
hold hands at
the hardware store and haven't had a vacation in twelve years.
We'll talk ‘til we strike that spark
of recognition:
Her mother, listening.
My mother, sober.
Acquaintance
When I knew her, I never knew her very well. Well, I knew her
family was poor. Just a thin corduroy coat with too-short sleeves
exposing bony ungloved wrists. No winter boots. I’m part Cherokee,
she said, wearing her shiny black hair in braids.
She fidgeted with an unlit, half-smoked butt. Beaded bracelets cuffed
both arms. (I made these, she bragged. Cool, I thought.) Descriptions
of her weekends were incomprehensible to me — the cop she blew
(you blew?) to avoid a misdemeanor. The winter beach party
campfire, green Jeep, dope. The realtor she laid after he found her
that studio on Marlborough Street. I hooked up with this guy
from Philly, she said. He took me on an amazing trip. Wanna see
my tracks? she said, eyes flirting, then glanced away as if I were
an old boyfriend. I can’t believe it’s you, she said, All this she spilled
at Boylston station. Trolleys squealed on rails around us. I tucked
my hair behind my ear, cleared my throat to draw her eyes
away from Friends Don’t Let Friends ad, back to me.
Deluge
Let’s take some pictures of your eyes,
the doctor says.
I rest my chin. I fight the blink.
Blink, he says.
I blink. The light.
Both sockets river with tears,
uncontrollably.
I think Dublin.
Liffey waters rushing and we
cresting, too.
Swell of May.
So much, so fast.
Susan McDonough-Hintz
Susan McDonough-Hintz published her first poem in her college literary magazine, Fountainspray, and won the award for best poetry in 1979. She didn't pick up her pen to write poetry again for nearly 25 years.
But these past few years have been extraordinary for her. Two of Susan's poems, "Tattoo" and "Noose," were published in the 2008 Routledge anthology, Queer & Catholic.
Shortly thereafter, She met poet Barbara Helfgott Hyett and joined the Workshop for Publishing Poets in Brookline, Massachusetts,
and hasn't put her pen down since.
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