Nov 07 Featured Poet: Jo-Ann Cimiluca

ANNE SEXTON

I am in love with the work of the poet Anne Sexton.
She was mischievous, vulgar, and suicidal.
I read Anne and feel there was someone in the world
Who wouldn’t judge me.

She wrote in a letter to her daughter, Linda,
That Linda should talk to Anne’s poems and to her own heart,
Anne would be in both when her daughter needed her.
I need her also.

Anne was born the same year as my mother.
She died the year my Mom got sick.
Like my mother, she nicknamed her younger daughter Joy.

With my first job in the bank
I was so poor
I would drive to the mall each lunch hour
For an egg roll with water from the drinking fountain.

I would stop in the bookstore each time to read one poem
From her collection.
Even when I could afford it,
I waited awhile before I bought that book.

Anne Sexton’s beloved smoker’s voice
Drones in my ears when I’m driving,
And at night when I can’t sleep.
I am grateful for her work.

*

WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR TRUNK?

He’s always tolerant and cheerful,
Knows the technical name for gathering,
Or whatever it is he calls it.
He collects things,
Repairs things,
Creates art.

In my trunk are some stored items:
Four boxes of stuffed animals from work,
Brought home for laundering during the painting,
I was afraid I’d damage them
So they are still in the trunk.

Three pairs of pumps,
A satchel of makeup,
Clean workout clothes.

My high school yearbook,
A small Tupperware of sand from Barbados,
Food for stray cats.

Painful hiking boots,
Worn once,
Now a poem rolled up and stuck in the left boot
Instead of a foot.

I must ask him if there is a name for clipping useless articles
From the newspaper,
When it feels like each fresh bunch of words will change my life.

I began reading the agony columns as a freshman in high school,
Always hoping someone else would have the same problem.
They never did.
But now,
At least three times a week,
Someone writes in with my problem.
And I clip it,
And save it.
But I never take any action.
I’m afraid I’ll cause damage.

So I stuff the clippings in the junk drawer.
I don’t read them again.
I don’t discard them.
They accumulate there
Like some intention to change my actions,
Growing stronger on their own,
Multiplying,
Cluttering up my kitchen drawer.