“I Remember” exercise

A writing exercise from free-write to poem over at the fantastic Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. Check it out!

7 minutes free write associated with “I Remember..” turned into poetry:

I remember red, red like Barbie’s

high heel we always lost, my sister

gently taking the blame when I

was the one who had thrown it.

Colors.

Brown–like the mahoganey pews my mother

waxed, up and down the aisles I’d follow behind

with the sloshing golden Pinesol.  Golds-

the colors of my first years in the early eighties

in a house with a woman chain smoking Dorals

and drinking pots of black coffee. Tired and angry

and alone. The orange and brown carpet

squares in our chilly living room, noise

from the highway beyond our backyard; my

torn hand-me-down overalls,

a strawberry shortcake pajama shirt.

I remember metal fences and wire, metalic

on my tongue, smearing sticky hands

on my brown corduroys. Kool Aid

and macaroni smudge on my fat cheeks;

the taste of purple–weeds that is, chewing

on the bitter shoots that I had to spit out

usually on the way to the baseball games

you could hear the bat’s crack from the trail

deep in the pines outside of our little town,

suffocating in the scent of milkweed, thistle

prickling to my legs. The smooth sound of

the white rubber tires of the stroller over the

path, carrying my sister–the redhead

that wanted the red shoes.

I remember my stepfather coming in shortly

after those times, that freshness going stale,

his presence that of a stone wall,

master of the house, and our tiptoeing

and whispering never quite quiet enough.

Purple and brown, the hue of bruises.

Rocking in his stained recliner to The Oakridge Boys

as we grew and grew into hiding.

I remember the dirt road to my father’s

farmhouse, the electric emeralds of summer

crowding the ditches, and, in winter, the brown

bones of weeds and dead trees sharp

against the cold gray sky. Smoke coming from

the chimney like a paused cloud as we pulled into

the driveway in the Dodge Monaco, and then

warmth

on our tricycles over the hills in the linoleum

room to room, laughing.

Grandpa Leo, or “Pa”, in his black

leather chair, drinking an Old Style. My

father across from him, drinking too. Dirty cousins

visiting the hamper of a house;

welfare, food stamps, cloth diapers, beer, powdered milk and noodles

and how we loved it there.  And then

only weekends with him, and then

not at all.

I think of how my father had pushed me

on the swing under the crab apple tree, and how

I wished I had known how to say the words

Save us.