This Boy's Mom

Poems & Stories written by Richard & Jeannine Pelletier ~ The little haiku style poems below are a sneaky collaboration. I took my mother's emails and simply played around with the language and found in them some poems that told her story in another way. I worked on these a couple of years ago and had to put them aside to pursue other things. I had thought about calling this tiny collection of odds and ends

M o m m y + D a d a

The Shirt by Robert Pinsky is here simply to pay homage to my mother's time in life as a seamstress (relatively short) and her heritage in the trade...


Our Father is Sleeping
A chow mein liberal
In the company of salty, exhausted friends

Dust mops, cat scans
Keyboards, cooks

Somehow it
Does not always work

No doubt my desperate eye
Needs a clean window


Music to my Scotch Ears
Like a bad penny
I am getting old

I was quite sure
Seabiscuit called this morning
Wishing you more success


What Done Him In
It is cloudy and cool
Felt good after
All that sleep

The word housewife
should not apply
I certainly am not a cook

Do you remember this sixtyish woman,
alphabetizing her canned goods?

Carry on my son,
Carry my regret

I am chagrined
All my telling-

I recall my elderly mother person


Another Fifty Years
You are sad
the two of you
the power, the traveling
all the traveling,

switched relays, procedures, information

Luckily
I am sure it is
nothing drastic, this outage.


Hearts Out
The telephone interrupts a nice lunch
seems to me
everything is always about the money
is that not so?

Ebay has been a godsend
I keep forgetting
Mother said enjoy
Do not lift a finger


The Shirt
by
Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band
Of cuff I button at my wrist.
The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze


rhea quintin 14 years old
At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--
The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
up to the windowsill, then held her out
Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.
A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her.
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked
Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord.
Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans
Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,
Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt.
The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.


1938
I was unaware
The sudden wonderful sea
of Reading and looking
And memories-

A most destructive storm
Called today
More news tonight


Remember Where They Live
Good morning
Did you get paid?
Of course
I am kidding
Was there any significance
to the message?


I am Angry
All circuits were busy
Dad was long gone
We had forgotten you

The weather, however
Was beautiful
Daylight is quite funny
At 7pm

Further south tonite
We tried to reach you
You did not answer
Sandwiches, scrabble


This was written for a writer’s workshop. The assignment was to find a way to get “Maraschino Cherry” into some sort of narrative.It is largely true. Up to you to figure out which part is true and which isn't.

The Fall River Herald News
August 11, 1982

Retired French Canadian Bookkeeper to Inventory Entire Kitchen
In a brief interview today sixty-two year old Jeannine L. Pelletier spoke to reporters about her intention to catalogue in alphabetical order every food item in her tiny, avocado colored kitchen. Armed with a mountain of 3 x 5 inch index cards and a quiver of sharpened pencils, the newly retired mother of two stood before the vast empty plain of retirement fully prepared to engage her senses and manage the household.

“My husband’s a nutcase,” she sighed. “If I’m down to one can of tomato soup, I’m saying two hail mary’s, an act of contrition and the Lord’s Prayer on the way to the Stop & Shop. Hopefully, I can get back before his highness runs out of soup.”

Cleverly color coding her inventory, (yellow cards for soft foods, green for hard) the softly spoken former bookkeeper acknowledged her family was struggling with the new system.

“Well you know, they’ll be flipping thru index cards looking to see if we’ve got something and they’ll yell at me “’Mom! Pringles! Hard or Soft?
And of course I tell them, Pringles are hard food. They crunch. They’re really confused about eggs. For instance I classify hard-boiled eggs as a soft food, but eggs in the carton as hard.
“I’m much further along in my hard food inventory than the soft stuff,” she said wistfully. “I’m well into the P’s in my hard foods but I’ve only got to ‘M’ on soft foods. Here’s the card right here see? One-half jar maraschino cherries.”




Within
No word from you all day
Just please say yes

Time and reason can no longer
Help me

What happened was going to happen
He is older than I
Puttying up disappointment and hurt

You buy your own
Only ninety-nine cents.


Sometimes He Can Get Civil
There is still some inflammation
They will send us
all the pertinent information
waiting patiently

I was a sewing machine operator
Batting zero
On my first day

All these women,
painful sleeves, tiny flowers.


It is Always Time for Lunch
So many will suffer
Before I go to bed

The days are so much shorter now
I guess you owed me
that three pints of blood

Dad will pick up our sandwiches
Talk, talk, talk