Lisa Folkmire
World View
We weren’t lovers at all
when he asked me if I would
ever have children and I told him
I didn’t think I was
necessarily maternal
like most women my age
assume they are. He said
that it probably wasn’t an
environmentally sound
choice to have children
anyway as he turned his
face away from me and
over to the zoo’s new polar
bear as she pushed her
head up through the water
and tried to drown a plastic
barrel with her big paws.
That summer the air
conditioned bear aquarium
was under construction
it was not such a
coincidence that
it was the hottest
Michigan summer the zoo
had lately seen. Sometimes
I forget the force of
negativity. I want you
to know that I am trying
to reach out, but I am
afraid of what might
come back.
It’s like the nights when we
were together and I didn’t care and as you
would reach closer and closer
I would call out louder and louder,
days before I was yelled at
for yelling in
my own messy
ecstasy.
Even the sound of
people eating gets to me
these days. The gab-smacking
sound of saliva on tongue on
teeth like a kiss when
the teeth accidentally
touch.
I want you to
know that I am tired
and concerned and I
miss the happy days,
whiskey at my side,
fingers tracing old library
books, feet toeing closer
to the river, the ripples
of brook trout reaching out
a hint of the animal pleasure
I can’t let out in daylight.
I want you to know
that I am trying very
hard to remain positive.
The polar bear in summer,
pushing the barrel under
water, waiting for it to come
back up.
A surprise
and then a disappointment.
Lisa Folkmire is a poet and legal technical writer from Warren, Michigan. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts where she studied poetry. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Up the Staircase Quarterly, Barren Magazine, Glass, Gravel, and Occulum. She also has work forthcoming in Okay Donkey.
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