Poetry: Selections from Juleigh Howard-Hobson

I Accept This, Even While I Feel Bitter

 

Things turn up for people like you, not just

lost wallets or sunglasses (although those

too) but lost dogs, lost friends, lost dreams. It must

be nice to assume they will, to suppose

that you deserve that second chance because

obviously you do. My lost dog did

not come home again. My lost wallet was

gone for good. I never saw any kid

I grew up with. Once we grew up; we grew

apart and like everything else, became

yet another abandonment issue.

My past does not come back, I can’t reclaim

what goes away. I stopped dreaming when I

realized that, unlike yours, my dreams will die.

Regarding A Painting of My Mother That I Will

Be Throwing Out Because She Was A Narcissist

And I Was Never the Golden Child

Okay, she’s dead, nothing’s ended, except

her. This morning, though, was beautiful, I

drank coffee, helped myself to casserole

that somebody or other must have left

for me after the funeral. To die

is an event, it seems, requiring whole

legions of relatives to hover near.

Crying. Praying. For what? I don’t know. They

bugged me. Honestly. I couldn’t wait

for them to leave, taking their insincere

grief dramatics with them. Oh well. Today

I’m donating all the stuff that I hate.

Except this painting. Because I’m throwing

it away, bent in half. Then I’m going.

Liquor Store, 8 PM

It’s not just liquor that’s important, it’s

The lights that pour gold out on the darkness,

Spilling out of it, erasing the streets

Where everyone passes judgement. Homeless

Isn’t a metaphor for loser. But

The world will treat you that way, as if you

Opened up your hands and just threw out what

Ever it was you had worth having. Do

They see the way the yellow of the lights

Bleaches the black edge of all that gnawing

Emptiness out here? How it drives cold nights

Away, so some can sleep curled, thick snoring

Within some drunk dreamscape that is nowhere

Until the morning comes. Away from there.

Here and Now

They want us to believe that things will be

better. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. Or next

Thursday. By year’s end at the latest. We

just need to remain optimistic. Let’s

all watch as the pendulum swings back to

normal. Or the new normal, because that

old one’s gone. People tend to do

what’s expected of them. Believe. Wait. At

last. As long as. Once upon a time lives

were built upon foundations already

there, like a thick quilt, patch-worked and derived

from past things. But not now. Society

changes fast these days. There is nothing there,

underneath but we’re not supposed to care.

Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s poetry has appeared in The Valparaiso Poetry Review, Mobius.The Lyric, 34 Orchard, Capsule Stories, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (Great Weather for Media), Lift Every Voice (Kissing Dynamite) and other places. Nominations include Best of the Net, the Elgin, the Rhysling, and the Pushcart. Her sixth and most recent book is Curses, Black Spells and Hexes; A Grimoire Sonnetica (Alien Buddha).