You Can Take It In Spades
At the blood donation center
I am my most brave self and it is early early,
but I’ve been up for a while. I had to eat
breakfast, a strange undertaking. I stood
over the sink chewing a chunk of baguette
that did not want to go down.
Remember when I bet you twenty dollars
you couldn’t eat a slice of Wonder Bread
in under a minute?
The nurse asks which finger I prefer to be
pricked on. I offer my right index, but she gives
it back, says it has to be a middle or a ring.
I offer my left ring. It hurts and the blood is
a small black pearl.
Remember when we were dressed as Santas and
got into a fight on the street walking home?
It may be illegal for two people to be so ridiculous.
Remember when you rode the bus with me
all the way to Portland to see my mother after
she put herself into a coma? One of us should
grow up, own a car.
But thank you is what I meant.
Now you’ve moved away. You’re in AA
and have Amends for me.
You prefer to make them in person, you say.
I want them but I don’t. I picture them
as a package wrapped with string that you
would hand to me. I could finger the paper, shake it
a little. I could place it on the top shelf of my closet,
push it just out of sight.
Everything happens to everyone else.
My blood fills the bag slowly. I have to squeeze and squeeze
this ball, and then a bigger one the nurse brings out
because of how slow.
*
Another Happy Return
For your birthday I got up early and baked
a cake and threw it outside for the birds.
Your birthday is for the birds.
I left the door open, let the cold come
pouring into the living room.
Your birthday is for the living.
Look: I found pictures of you as a child
to make confetti. When I toss it into the air
it falls like snow, and your birthday is freezing;
the snow sticks and drifts.
I could build an igloo here on top of this bed.
Out front there are animals, there are people gathering
at the windows to peer in.
I’ll go out and make them sing for you, make them
carve all the trees into candles, light their tops.
For your birthday everything has to do what I say.
*
Just Be Honest
When all of my hair fell out in the movie theater
I didn’t want to cause a scene,
so I gathered it up into a ball, stuffed it
into a half eaten tub of popcorn.
I nudged my friends in the dark.
I showed them my naked head, gleaming
with smears of butter.
“It looks fine,” they whispered. “It looks better!”
Every last one of us in the audience cried at the end of the movie
when _____ came back and admitted how he felt about _____.
They’d done her hair caramel, with honey streaks.
*
Tags: if you can read this you clicked on poetry, melissa chandler, poetry, poets
Wonderful. Always so glad to click through and find such lovely poems.
these are wonderful. so compelling.
I clicked through! These are great.
“For your birthday everything has to do what I say.” This seemed to me a very accurate representation of one’s feelings of grief.
These are so spooky and funny and beautiful.
These were really fantastic! I’m more of a science-type person who has trouble “getting” poetry sometimes, these were really accessible and touching. More please!!
Beautiful! These were a treat to read.
And since we’re all talking about clicking or not clicking poems, you know, the only reason I wouldn’t click a poem is that they’re harder to absorb with activity buzzing around me. I like them best alone at lunch or even better, in the evening 🙂
Wonderful post — I particularly like the final stanza of “You Can Take It In Spades.”
Poems! I click! Yay!
(Also, unpublished Larry Levis poems magically appeared in the world today. You seem like the kind of folks who would want to know.)
always so happy to see poetry on here!
i like!
Been thinking about long-term friendships a lot lately, and “You Can Take It In Spades” really hit all the right notes: memories of goofy things done together, ridiculous fights, apologies that can go unsaid but need to be said, growing apart then back together, and the self-reflection that can cause… What a great ode to friendship!
These lines are amazing:
Remember when we were dressed as Santas and
got into a fight on the street walking home?
It may be illegal for two people to be so ridiculous.
These are so great!!! Suddenly really scared of my hair falling out at the movies, tho.
Lovely!
Ooooh. I loved these! LOVED THEM!
that is all.
These were so so wonderful.
I got weird deja vu reading the line “Remember when you rode the bus with me/all the way to Portland to see my mother after/she put herself into a coma?” and went back to find the essay Melissa Chandler wrote for The Hairpin about just that (http://thehairpin.com/2012/09/numbers-about-my-mother-2)!
I really love these. Especially the penultimate stanza in the first poem.
(It feels weird to be able to leave a comment on a poem. Usually I just underline things and put an exclamation point in the margin and dog-ear the page and then put it back on my poetry shelf.)
I really love these. Especially the penultimate stanza in the first poem.
(It feels weird to be able to leave a comment on a poem. Usually I just underline things and put an exclamation point in the margin and dog-ear the page and then put it back on my poetry shelf.)
Toast poems are wonderful. I clicked through!
These were such a pleasure to read. the poem in particular, “You Can Take It In Spades” really resonated with me. I look forward to reading more of your poetry Melissa!
Frog put the cookies in a box. “There,” he said. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can open the box,” said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog. Frog got a ladder. He put the box up on a high shelf. “There,” said Frog. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”
“But we can climb the ladder and take the box down from the shelf and cut the string and open the box,” said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog. Frog climbed the ladder and took the box down from the shelf.
He cut the string and opened the box.
Frog took the box outside. He shouted in a loud voice,
“HEY BIRDS. HERE ARE COOKIES!”
Birds came from everywhere. They picked up all the cookies in their beaks and flew away.
“Now we have no more cookies to eat,” said Toad sadly. “Not even one.”
“Yes,” said Frog, “but we have lots of will power.”
“You may keep it all, Frog,” said Toad. “I am going home now to bake a cake.”
I am afraid that this was all I could think of throughout these pieces. I kept seeing supporting imagery in them…
THESE ARE GREAT. You know, sometimes I want and love and love reading poetry addressed to ‘you’ about ‘us’ and that sort of thing the most, to be honest. Not always, but a lot. It makes me feel like I know where I stand in relation to a poem; and where the voice of the poem stands. Also, ‘I want them but I don’t’ is exactly the thing about Amends. YES, maybe we could have more Melissa Chandler poems? I am super into them.
Melissa Chandler just fucking ran up and punched me in the gut and made me curl into a ball of tears in the middle of my office.
“Another Happy Return” is vicious and beautiful and sad true and sad.
The last line of the last poem is perfect.