Lyrical Somerville

One way to deal with the past is to write about it. Poet Susan B. Weiner writes about the baggage of her earlier years, and how she handled it later on in her life. To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to: Doug Holder 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143 dougholder@post.harvard.edu

My Mother’s Nails

My mother worked as my father’s secretary,
her fingers hitting black metal typewriter keys
day after day in a room
papered in gray and brown stripes

Her nails were short and sensible.
Just right for a typist,
never polished,
but always clean.

When I was a child, she showed me how to scrub
under those dead skin cells with
brush bristles splayed from use.

Now I grow my nails long
and every Sunday I enamel them in
must-have-it iris or tutti frutti frost.
I don’t own a nail brush.
I never will.

Shreds of a Ph.D. Thesis

Yesterday I stirred the shreds of
my dissertation in the compost bin,
where they’d rested for several months.
I mixed them more deeply into
the mass of leaves, manure and worms.

Then I hoisted my shovel,
tossing a load into my wheelbarrow,
from whence I’d move it to my flower beds.

How ironic that a project so dead –
page after page of notes
about long gone bureaucrats –
would now nourish
the hundreds of daffodils
I’d bought from a wholesale catalog.

Susan B. Weiner