A WORLD WITHOUT SEAT BELTS
New & Selected Poems by Kelly Morgan
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Published by:
Kelly Morgan at Smashwords
Copyright (c) 2011 by Kelly Morgan
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Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts. ~Author Unknown
The thing about family disasters is that you never have to wait long before the next one puts the previous one into perspective. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
“Home is a place you grow up wanting to get back to.” ~ John Ed Pearce, Journalist
Contents
On The Way To An Illustrious Advertising Career
The Ones Who Force Me To Play God
Poetry Reading At Museum Of Art
Recipe For Surviving A Poetry Slam
Zimmermann’s Motel, Twin Lakes, Wisconsin
Where I Came From
There was Highway 51,
two paved lanes
over flat farmland
coming and going
going and coming
in either direction,
everything similar.
Down the center
a hypnotic yellow line
reached toward
what appeared
to be my future.
The greatest danger
I reminded myself
more than once
would be to fall asleep
before reaching some place else.
Down the road,
always another road.
Some had more lanes.
And the scenery changed
as the future slipped
behind the wheels.
Coming and going.
Going and coming.
Barbara and Bob Morgan and me.
First Kiss
Before the tourist season,
before the tourists drove up from Chicago
in their Chevrolets, Corvairs
and Cadillac Coup de Villes;
when the lilacs were still in bloom
Mike Zookowski, a local boy,
who rode a Stingray bike with a banana seat
asked my sister to wait outside
the thick dark bushes.
Time for my first lesson in kissing.
On the ground there were broken beer bottles
and I couldn’t stop giggling.
He had to tell me to close my eyes
and when his mouth reached for mine
our teeth bumped, our lips smacked.
It was altogether too sloppy. And yet!
And yet, the lush branches
of the lilac bushes with their armfuls
of butterfly blossoms generously
lent us their bouquet, their light
lavender powdered scent
a fresh breath of innocence.
Zimmermann’s Motel in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin was owned by
my grandparents on my mother’s side.
The Laundry, 1962
She fed our sundresses
through rubber rollers.
The old-fashioned washing machine
had once gobbled up a boy’s arm.
“Curiosity killed the cat,”
Grandma always said.
Then she piled the laundry
in a red plastic basket
and it was our turn.
Before we could go
to the beach my sister and I
had to hang everything out to dry.
We were afraid of the wasps
who built their nests
in the rafters above the machine.
“If you leave them alone,
they’ll leave you alone.”
Grandma always said.
We pinned dresses
up by their shoulders,
shirts by their tails
and pants inside out.
It’s what we’d been taught.
When rain threatened,
hands on her hips she scowled
at the clouds. Who would win?
Grandma or God?
Then the bed sheets flapped —
graceful and white as a flag and
she surrendered to the inevitable
— whatever the heavens brought.
We raced the weather to save
what could be saved.
When the sun came
back out to play, once again
we pinned the dresses
up by their shoulders
shirts by their tails
and pants inside out.
“A little hard work
never hurt anybody,”
Grandma always said.
My mother and me.
A Lesson In Dying
You won’t catch much from
the end of a pier they warn us.
No matter. I dangle my bare feet
in the shallow water, wrapping
the seaweed tendrils around my big toe.
Another lazy day of watching schools
of Bluegills swim in circles.
Then Frankie waves an earthworm
in my face. I screech. When he cuts them
in pieces and threads them on a hook.
I cover my eyes. We don’t catch anything
though — not until a motor boat docks
and strangers give us all their fish.
A very large net filled with fish
from the deep end of the lake.
I watch the fish flop on the pier
gasping for air, their gills opening
and closing in one last prayer.
Frankie strings them one at a time
on a fishing line and on the march home,
we display them — as proud
as if we were returning war heroes.
Frankie’s mother spreads old newspapers
on the back porch and I learn the worst
is yet to come. We must slice off their heads,
scrape off their scales, slit their cold
gray bellies and clean out their guts.
For a young girl who has only seen fish
wrapped in Saran wrap — no bones,
no blood — it is my first lesson in dying.
The eyes on their lopped-off
fish heads stare up at me.
Months later, when Great Grandpa Jodak
lay in his casket, his lifeless eyes stare at me too.
His death is not something to talk about.
His death is not something they allow
children to see so I can only imagine
it hadn’t been any easier for him
than for the fish.
Nor someday, would it be
any easier for me.
Me in the second grade. The perm? A Toni.
Mom rolled rods in my hair and poured on
the worst smelling lotion. I thought I looked beautiful.
Actually, I resemble little Orphan Annie.
Initiation
Mom dealt a pinochle of pink