Monday, August 29, 2022

New Poetry by Peter Mladinic










Green Turtles

Resentment is a tuna fish sandwich.
A peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat.
The garden-fraught-with-discontent-by-
the-river’s flowers let go its fistful of dirt
over the coffin lid. Goodbye, Matilda.
My grandmother, an entity 
in my heart in my head. My uncle Will said
She’s in heaven. I said, smugly,
if that’s what you want to believe. I believe
in river flowers, peanut butter, tuna fish.

Robert Q, Frank said, you need to learn
how to talk people, to Bill Frappier, Dwight
David Bair and Christine Walsh. And to
Alan Parker, Amy Swerdlick and Robin
Grabrowski.  Tell them about the snapper’s
jagged edged shell, different from orange
shelled turtles and smaller, green shelled
turtles swimming in clear water in a round
plastic dish. They don’t want to hear about
a fist full of dirt sprinkled on a coffin lid.

Okay, dark Frank.  I’ll keep my Matilda
in the garden by the river in my heart. 
I taste the peanut butter and jelly and can
almost feel her fingers caress the snapper’s
jagged edged shell. Be careful it doesn’t
bite you, I say. I love when
the doctor’s got that big needle, Amy
Swerdlick, in his hand and says, This is
going to hurt, and it does. That’s my 
miracle, Frank. I’m talking to my people.

Robert Q, all Bill Frappier and Christine
Walsh want is your money, and a weekend
in Vegas, to watch a little ball spin round
a roulette wheel. They’ve got their own
grandmothers they said goodbye to, 
their own rivers, their own green turtles 
they got from pet shops that die when you
get them home. You look at them and 
they die, those kinds of turtles. They
go the way of all living creatures, Uncle 

Will, Alan Parker, you and I. Bill Frappier,
up Newton, Mass., has his own Matilda, 
his own fistful of dirt flung on the coffin
in the hole in the ground. Like you he smells
the river flowers’ fragrance, like you 
someday, too weak to make a fist.
You should go to Disneyworld, or maybe
in Wichita Falls one night go to a rave.
Donna can’t. Dead of a brain tumor at 52
In 2007.  She never hit you up for money.

Donna Curd kindled my life a short while,
dark Frank. Petite, natural blonde, 
always she had a head cold.
Pretty face, a voice quick to laugh, her hair
wore the river flowers, her fingers caressed
the jagged shell, the snapper’s eyes, she
looked into.  Donna, RIP. Goodbye, good
poems she wrote in Fayetteville, dark
Frank, I’m talking to my people.  Goodbye, 
Matilda, goodbye. Donna Curd, RIP.


- © Peter Mladinic 2022


Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.

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