Meri Bender

Poems

Regrets Only

I had my first orgasm in San Diego

In a hotel room after watching a James Bond movie

The kids asleep in the next room.

I had my first orgasm in junior high

In the girl’s restroom

As I tried to insert my first tampon.

I had my first orgasm at 18 months

Pushing my diaper against the crib.

I stopped having orgasms when I visited my gynecologist.

He inserted a tool in my vagina

And proclaimed vaginal thinning, dryness and deadening of tissues.

I stopped having orgasms when my period stopped

Only to discover them in adolescent fantasies.

I stopped having orgasms when I turned 85 or 90

And so what? 100.

I wrapped them all in tissue

And placed them on my diaphragm

Gave the kids the diaphragm with instructions

Throw it in the ocean

Catch the wind and below soar and land in a pile of sea anemones

Throbbing in their own time

To the echoes of the world. 

The Surface of Everyday Things

Don’t think it, just continue.

The clothes stick to the side of the washer, flattened by the force of the spin cycle.

The ketchup fell out of the refrigerator.

Red, red—thick, oozing out.

The plane arrives Sunday afternoon.

The family in a reunion of sorts.

I float, skim the surface

Of everyday things.

Calling the gas man to fix the heater as the house cools to a frigid self.

We wait—we pass the ketchup, heat the English muffin and butter up.

The date is set, the calendar circled as though that was necessary.

We talk about the candidates

Caruso’s blurry past and fallen promises.

We look at statistics, but age colors everything.

I buy extra sheets for the children, making beds, dates are circled.

I give orders, calm myself with attacking the clutter.

Feeling endings approaching, but from where.

What corner holds an answer? Blank spots cover scary thoughts.

Come here, younger one, sit on my lap and I will comb your hair.

Wednesday, it is. 

Prelude

I look at my gnarled hands

Pressing down the keys

Translating a Chopin Prelude

To the unwilling recalcitrant piano

My thinking is slower

My deafness surrounds me

But I struggle and plod on

Trying to discover the beauty

In the deceptive notes

It is after school

The den is filled with the afternoon sun

It filters through the blinds

I wander in, Joan, my disabled sister, 6 years older

Is finishing up her reading lesson with Mrs. Brennan, her tutor

I twirl, and twist as I glance at the papers

Mrs. Brennan is putting away.

Words

I know I can read

And Joan struggles, slowly learning to put the words together.

It comes easy to me

But I don’t want to leave her behind

/She was always kind to me

Caring for me in her own style

When I wet my pants in Kindergarten

She laughed

When I thought there were burglars at the bedroom window

She laughed

I didn’t question her judgement

It was comforting

I try to put two hands together

Left never listens, comes down one or two

Notes away from its goal

I feel clumsy, stupid, dealing with my aging brain

And the seduction of the music which floats outside my fingertips

I didn’t hate Joan until I became an adolescent

Afraid to bring friends home

Joan, in her twenties, surviving two major breakdowns

Staying in her room, smoking and watching TV

I didn’t know how to explain her

Describe her unraveling at 18

It was a double, triple, quadruple whammy

Hydrocephalic at birth, slow, uncoordinated

Finding barriers she didn’t know how to handle

When I tell people about my piano experience

How hard it is

Feeling clumsy, slow

Struggling

They become inspired.

But Joan never inspired anyone

Or did she?

I look at our children

One daughter wrote a novel about her. 

One daughter, a child psychiatrist, treats struggling teens

One daughter also wrote a novel about a child who transforms into an inanimate object

I am transforming

Butterfly to cocoon

Backwards, into a more restricted existence

I beg forgiveness for my escapade into

What—The lure of mastery

My sister could never achieve

I wish to wrap my arms around her and whisper

I love you as you are

But I never did-I always hoped she would get better.

Advice to myself

If you drive in the fog at night

Follow the center line in the road

As it weaves thru Beverly Glen

If the shoes are too small   

Put them on a stretcher for 2 days       

If your husband falls off the toilet   

Run next door for help   

If he clamors for help   

But discards people like shredded wheat       

Don’t worry Frontier will fix it   

No TV—no outside voices

Repair comes online via the cell phone   

Find worry under napkins

In shower   

Raining down what ifs and Its gonna be

Put Home HealthCare Aides in a bottle

Send them out to sea

To retrieve them 1/2 hour later

As he falls again

Put all the agains in a box

Throw them out the car window into the fog.

      The Bathtub

I sit in the bathtub

My broken arm healed in its own way

Hairy, stiff, rigid

Not reaching nor twisting

Framed by the limits of my current non existing cast

I am 12 years old

Water covers my growing pubic hair

My Mother sits beside the bathtub and holds my healing arm

Slowly, twisting it

So I can become normal

The arm isn’t the problem

My emerging body rages against my Mother’s ample bosom

Adolescent beckons, I want to jump in

But my body is slow, perferring the comforts of childhood

My Mother cries as she twists my arm

I cry, wanting her out of my life

Don’t look at me like that

I, child of your bones

Wanting, willing, waiting to be dragged into womanhood

Praying for my period at night

When my sister suggested I might be a boy

The arm has shed its hair

I can gradually turn it

Touch my hand to my stomach

“Thank You” I tell my Mother

Wapping towels around my undeveloped body

Praying for boobs and blood

And getting my Mother in the bathtub instead.