POEMS/ Sixteen
Sixteen
She stood in the middle of the babies’ section
hating it all — the early getting up, the bus ride
into town, the older salesladies who lorded
over her, the endless refolding and tidying
little shirts, tiny socks, blankets, and diapers.
There was the phone to answer, customers to serve,
and always, always, admonitions — she “was too young,”
she “had to learn, she “didn’t get it right again,”
she “wouldn’t last.” She hated going home
to help with meals and do the dishes, hated
being tired, despised the waiting for another day to come,
another bus ride to the hot and sticky town.
When she could, she retreated to the stockroom
to tie up parcels and label them for shipping.
She loved the solitude, the single light bulb
casting shadows in curious shapes
upon the wall, loved the cool, the looming towers
of empty boxes, all sorted out by sizes, like children
lining up for school, the smell of ink and paste,
coarseness of the coils of twine between her fingers,
the giant plastic cans, plump with bags of trash
like well-fed matrons, arms filled with purchases.
Sometimes while she was working there
Mike, the store’s old janitor came by.
Most of all she loved to talk to him.
Mike brought the mail and took away the trash,
and there was little time for conversation,
but she found out that in the dimness of his past,
he had sailed on a merchant ship,
crossed oceans to places with exotic names,
and when he spoke of traveling open seas to Bali or Japan,
in the dark quiet of the stockroom, she could hear the waves,
could smell the water, feel the breath of ocean breezes
in her hair—a ship, heading out.
Sixteen appears in All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010)
She stood in the middle of the babies’ section
hating it all — the early getting up, the bus ride
into town, the older salesladies who lorded
over her, the endless refolding and tidying
little shirts, tiny socks, blankets, and diapers.
There was the phone to answer, customers to serve,
and always, always, admonitions — she “was too young,”
she “had to learn, she “didn’t get it right again,”
she “wouldn’t last.” She hated going home
to help with meals and do the dishes, hated
being tired, despised the waiting for another day to come,
another bus ride to the hot and sticky town.
When she could, she retreated to the stockroom
to tie up parcels and label them for shipping.
She loved the solitude, the single light bulb
casting shadows in curious shapes
upon the wall, loved the cool, the looming towers
of empty boxes, all sorted out by sizes, like children
lining up for school, the smell of ink and paste,
coarseness of the coils of twine between her fingers,
the giant plastic cans, plump with bags of trash
like well-fed matrons, arms filled with purchases.
Sometimes while she was working there
Mike, the store’s old janitor came by.
Most of all she loved to talk to him.
Mike brought the mail and took away the trash,
and there was little time for conversation,
but she found out that in the dimness of his past,
he had sailed on a merchant ship,
crossed oceans to places with exotic names,
and when he spoke of traveling open seas to Bali or Japan,
in the dark quiet of the stockroom, she could hear the waves,
could smell the water, feel the breath of ocean breezes
in her hair—a ship, heading out.
Sixteen appears in All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010)
