Dammit is All One Word
Each snowflake different from the snowflake falling next to it.
Each kid waiting to go out to recess, unique. The rest
is history. Piling up in snowbanks, wind-borne into drifts.
Four kids piled into one bed at the end of each day,
an endless road trip in cheap motels. Getting to LA
five sunsets later, 500 miles per day,
kids in the backseat. Tar on the beach and between the toes.
A mother trapped all day in a tiny house, four kids
in a small world in a sprawling city in a tiny back yard.
Piling up in a sand box. Wound up in hula hoops.
She watches endless traffic on a six-lane highway,
damp clothes in the laundry basket. Her toddler son
dumps sand on the pile. Her oldest son wields a knife,
slices an apple cross-wise, shows her the star inside.
© Nan Jackson
Nan Jackson’s poetry and short fiction have been published in Flying Island Journal, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Peninsula Poets, Tulip Tree Review, the anthology Rumors, Secrets & Lies (Anhinga Press) and other publications. She has completed several 30-day poem-postcard projects, including a collection about Michigan’s Historic Bridge Park and the work she and her husband Vern Mesler do in iron and steel historic preservation.
The Loch Raven Review 