Michael Mayhew's Shared Poems

when you tell the ladies
at social services that
you want to adopt a child
they will ask you a great many
probing, personal questions

about your marriage
about your drug history
about your sex life

and then, at the end
of this verbal finger
up the wazoo, they
(meaning a young woman
in her twenties, fresh
out of college, with the
approximate life
experience of a salmon fry)
will say "what do you think
will change once
you have adopted a
child?"

the easy, glib answer
(the one you will give), is
"everything"

but the truer, more
confounding answer
is

"my ability to write
poetry will greatly
diminish, but my
ability to tell
anecdotes will
greatly increase."

put that down on
your form, kid

today, after the rain stopped
I put on Jan’s daughter’s
iPod and
took a long walk

I never changed the songs
when Jan gave it to me
I’m fond of it as is:
dated, clunky, and
filled with Jan’s daughter’s music

I recognize
Elvis Costello,
Liz Phair, Ben Folds,
the rest are mysteries
indie bands from the oughts
arrangements spare
voices flat
lyrics plaintive
as a teenaged crush

the streets are a grey wash
a kid on his bike hurries home
everyone else is inside
but you can sense them
in the smell of
simmered onions and
hamburger
a drift of wood smoke
citrus blossoms

I take it in with the
eyes and nose of
a fifty year old man and the
ears of a fifteen year old girl -
my mind, like
an abacus bead, slid
just a few degrees from
its accustomed position

I once said that
wearing someone else’s
iPod is the nearest thing
we have to telepathy
but tonight I remember
a college professor who
said that the goal of
anthropology is to
make the strange
familiar and the familiar
strange

this is like that
only sweeter

when the forensics team
(each besuited in a
crisp white jumper)
pried open the coffin
of Pablo Neruda
all that they found were
the bones of a man
named Neftali Basoalto
(lightly desiccated)
and a short note
which read
"Gone dancing.
Back at..."
but the bottom part
was missing
so the forensics team
scratched their heads
and did a slow pirouette
like white tops
revolving

I can’t help
noticing that
many of my poems
slavishly imitate
Charles Bukowski’s
only without the
fighting
fucking
boozing
Beethoven
or any
of the other
interesting parts

making the bed, racing to get the house
halfway clean so I can work
for five hours before I
retrieve the girl from school
before her snack
before another two hours of work
before our hour of "dad time"
before dinner
before her bath
before stories
before the nightly struggle
because she so hates
to be alone in bed
before dishes
before my good wife
and I recount our day
to each other and strategize
the next
before two more hours of
work before bed
before bed
before bed
before making the bed
I wonder if I'll
ever write another poem

And then just
like * that *
I see it, feel it, know it
She's the poem
I'm the poem
We are all three
The Poem