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Jubilation
1.
One instant I'm
too weak to cut
a frozen lime pie
the next flat
on the linoleum
staring into lights
2.
Buzz rumble clunk
in the E R all night
head and heart tests
Somebody's blood
smears the sink
I should feel
for a stranger's cut
instead dread
HIV hepatitis
3.
Morning more
tests brain MRI
drowns out Sinatra
On a screen a pulpy
muscle pumps
sounds like a toilet plunger
looks diseased
is not
Do I trust these results?
Will the chest wires chart
my many betrayals
as the lines jig down and up?
4.
Behind a curtain
my roommate gets bad news
parts of her body telegraphing
defeat from the front
I'm so pissed off! she rants to visitors
speaks on the phone of her garden
I peek around cloth
make small tomato talk
5.
My pal in bed
Hayden Carruth
survived poverty
electroshock alcohol divorces
his daughter's death
He can scarcely breathe yet
stands writes reads laughs
6.
Can't we have happy poems?
students ask
7.
Diagnosis syncope
loose silken word skipping a beat
door bench smokers wearing pajamas
My friend picks me up
back to the kitchen
pie still in the fridge
8.
Dear students
this poem is about
jubilation
Jubilation was chosen as one of the finalists for the
Milton Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry at Harpur Palate,
the literary magazine of Binghamton (SUNY),
while it had been simultaneously accepted for inclusion
in The Centrifugal Eye. All parties agreed to Jubilation's
appearance in HP's Winter 2005/2006 issue (Jan. release),
and subsequent appearance here in February.
Congratulations on your achievement, Margaret!
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2 36 75
for Ken, who fears numbers
I.
4 hands make it easy to turn
a big mattress
on a trip, 1 (drives) + 1 (reads the map)
1 gets a nook by the kitchen
2 sit in a lake-view booth
2 to waltz
quarrel
talk
make up
David, a widower, said,
Most days are better with 2.
II.
the 3 has a curvy shape
tilts up 90 degrees into cleavage
tips "W" off his bike
knocks sense into his head?
the 6 is a 9 upside down
(variation in bed?)
looks as you do at all things
from the opposite
point of view
III.
75
so-so test grade
fast lane m.p.h.
rolled shirt sleeve temp
grilled cheese lunch tip
half of a plumber's house call
bottles of beer on the wall
paraplegic centipede
menu # moo shoo pork
too many touchdowns
not enough Scrabble points
2 less than Dad's span
than Mom's, 14 less
2012: candles on my cake
at 85, how I'll want to look
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Two Cards in a White Carton
with Red Paper Hearts
1. To My Colleague:
As Writing Center windows stream
sunlight, I overhear, What
am I supposed to do with this? –
your response to a student's draft,
handwritten dyslexia obvious on every page.
ADD naps at your side, wakes to pick
up at The Colonel Bogey March.
I know. Some days are like that.
You like being right about format.
Me, too. Wanting the same pink,
juicy-fresh eraser, we have to keep
laughing. This Valentine's for us.
2. To Alice Munro:
"In Lives of Girls and Women, Del
Jordan's mother learns to drive,
tries to sell encyclopedias in the Ontario
bush. My mother wears pants, sews
a bright red suit, tells women in dairy-farm
Connecticut I'm a novelist. Del's mother asks,
Do you want the Baptist Ladies Auxiliary?
With your brains? Mine says – Would you
like to sell notions in the Five and Dime?
You don't have to do what others do. I'm
afraid of sex. Del does it leaning against
her house, with an ex-con, Garnet French.
She meets his farm family, agrees to marry,
won't let him sanctify her – drown her –
in the river, fights him off, amazed that
anyone could think he had real power
over me. Shaken, she buttons her blouse.
The walk back calms her. I wish I'd been
as gutsy. Munro gets girlhood right –
the bad taste, heartlessness, joy of it.
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Subaru, Corvette, ATM
Suddenly it's pouring, I can't see
through the windshield, park,
will wait to get cash, buy food.
My Subaru's cozy. During
a cloudburst, we camped in a wide
Munich field. Bolts shook the earth,
wind ripped at tents. We ate roast
chicken, clutched one another.
Today it's a dusty dashboard, trees
lashing, October goods. A guy
drives up fast to the curb. A young
coatless woman makes a dash, shoes
splashing, portico to passenger
seat. Blizzards set fires, sleet makes
hands grip. Off they whish to Germany.
In the Corvette, suddenly it's pouring.
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Margaret A. Robinson has been writing various things for a very long time. She has a chapbook, Sparks, at Pudding
House Publications. She gardens, teaches at Widener University, and lives in Swarthmore, PA. This is Margaret's second appearance
in The Centrifugal Eye.
Contact Margaret
Chapbook (see publications list)
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