Page 66 - WTP Vol. XI #5

caroLYn aDaMs
Getting Through the Weather
Remember the banister’s hard shellac,
and your finger-traces on its warm patina, mellowed over years. Remember the car
in the oyster shell driveway. You would go with your family to the beach, fill
buckets with wet sand, build lofty
castles studded with shells, a day’s vacation.
This was long ago, when you could still climb
trees with the neighbor boys every summer.
Before your mother taught you to make chili
for your father, to iron his shirts. You were programmed to be good, to be quiet, to want that sort of thing. Remember when that boy gave you flowers. You could see only as far as his eyes. Any other dream
was not in your power then. You were a ghost, learning to live in the body of a woman.
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Adams’ poetry and art have appeared in Steam Ticket, Cimarron Review, Evening Street Review, Dissident Voice, and Blueline Magazine, among others. She is the editor and publisher of the Oregon Poetry Calendar. The author of four chapbooks, she has a full-length volume forthcoming from Fernwood Press. She has been nominated multiple times for both Best of the Net and a Pushcart prize.