No one’s clear on how to live with wanting.
The dog snatches gloves from the table
begging to be chased. Why do you say boom
when you kick the ball? my grandson asks.
Compulsive, my need to make a bomb
of my own foot. Boom, the 1950s.
Everyone in love with mushroom clouds—
ballooning in magazine centerfolds
as Jane Russell models bras for full-
figured girls, and Maidenforms turn up
in courtrooms, rodeos, outer space.
Me with my meagers, asking for more.
Poetry, I asked you for dignity. Why
do you give me indignity? Boom,
My grandmother in her pink wool suit,
handkerchief tucked in a sleeve.
Her parquet floors, well waxed. Queen
for a Day, the Price is Right—women weeping
for ramshackle husbands with missing parts.
And all those kids born after, hungry
for love. Pride putting shine on wood,
what any bright floor will tell you. Boom.
The wind poisons 23 Japanese fishermen
by mistake. Boom, we name a bathing suit
for the islands we left uninhabitable. Poetry,
you offered me rentals; I wanted a world.
Ruth Hoberman lives in Newtonville, Massachusetts with her husband, daughter and son-in-law, two grandchildren, and dog. Since her 2015 retirement from Eastern Illinois University, she has published poems, essays, and reviews in various journals, including (most recently) Mom Egg Review, Solstice, Consequence, Constellations, Ibbetson Street, and SWWIM Every Day.
