More Two-Line Poems

July 10:

Under dead vines I find a score of new potatoes, twenty Yukon gold rounds clinging to hair like the sleep curlers on Shark Tank, firm, smooth in the palm of a hand, waves of joy.  

July 11:

In my garden zucchini form biceps, firm round upper arms after pushups through overlapping vines, a web of green clinging to tomato cages just barely standing on slim legs slicing into tulip skirted grow bags. 

July 12:

Walmart at midnight brings out the recluses, pajama-clad and half-washed, like summer children gutter running after a rainstorm, but morning gathers them outside a library, waiting for fresh-showered librarians to open the door.

July 13:

Father loved vegetables as long as they came out of cans, salty rubber green beans with screeching skins, a schoolboy’s prank shooting spitballs into Roberta’s pigtails, latex rings for the janitor at midnight. 

July 14:

I hated the canned peas more than almost anything, except maybe over-ripe cantaloupe, or that liver Mom made me eat in West Virginia, the taste so bad I ran from the kitchen into the back yard and threw up blood.

July 15:

Fresh green beans from the garden snap when you clean them, satisfying like a cork pop or leaning into dry leaves, ripe, woody, enough. 

July 16:

Salmon came out of a can in our house, pink crumbles for fried cakes or an eggy loaf sliced and steamy, a fish bread pudding best served warm. 

July 17:

That year I babysat for geometry tutoring, giving a math teacher mother time to date, a word problem somewhere as I ate foil wrapped salmon loaf and mac and cheese watching the one-year-old sleep. 

July 18:

Amy called it the Misery Synod where babies carry their mother’s sins, a strange place that fools you with homemade ice cream setting even peanut butter in its ways. 

July 19:

Milkweed pods like polished nails bend into breezes, drying just enough to open, white silk plumes in the center of the palm of your hand. 

 July 20:

Peanut butter by the tub, farm market apples, and leftover carrots from the salad bar, Doric columned defensive backs shifting sideways with circular capital trays that summer the Lions lived in my dorm.

July 21:

I don’t have a poem to write today, maybe because I ate black beans and rice for Donnas birthday dinner instead of food from the garden. Thank goodness I ate those ground cherries before I left.