Poems about Collegues

I wrote this poem about a colleague, and now every time I talk to her, I think about her waking up in the morning in a seersucker nightgown.


She has pot-bellied pigs for pets,
and with each sunrise she rises
out under a quilt from her mother.
There’s a red rag rug in her bathroom.

She dabs Oil of Olay
under her watery eyes
because her grandmother did.
She wears a seersucker nightgown.

An inherited plain and simple routine.
She’s got her ladylike
mapped out, a crossword.
Do this, this way.

I killed my pet fish,
and rise from a man’s bed
long after sunrise.
My neighbors could watch me pee.

I’ve used hand lotion on my face
cuz it's all just lard and wax,
and my mom never used nothing.
I curse and wince while brushing my hair.

My grandmother had no ways.
One year it was manure in the garden,
the next, dead carp.
Unclear routines, gigantic tomatoes.

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