|
Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover collage by Jan Keough
using 'Flower Galaxy' by Lauri Burke
•
|
Two gals
in our eighties, drank
cocoa and ate a box
of elephant ears—
flaky, sneaky pastries,
that weigh nothing until
they turn to cellulite on thighs.
Loaded on sugar, we wrote poetry
on an antique Underwood
with keys so stiff, we heaved
with passion to make them give up
the letters hiding in the ribbon.
*
Red letter by black letter,
we typed the profane poetry
of forbidden words
shit FUCK asS
motherFUCKER cunt
bullocks TWAT
tITS Shlong
Years of suppression released,
apprehension demystified,
wickedness set loose on typing paper.
All for us. Propriety be damned.
The evening doesn’t translate well
without the tears of hilarity and snot.
You had to be there. You had to be us.
|
When we told the nephews
(adult ones only), they stared
as if we spoke of a primordial subject
in a dead language.
One asked what an Underwood was.
Another could not understand
why we couldn’t print two copies
instead of using carbon paper.
Call that evening a thrill with chills
for tiny lives raised on table manners,
educated with intimidating vocabularies
that can politely shove a person against a wall
with sarcasm—and no raised voices.
You had to be there, I guess.
You had to be us.
Not one comprehended
the joy of typing censored words
in CAPITAL RED letters.
Call that evening a thrill with chills
for tiny lives raised on table manners,
educated with intimidating vocabularies
that can politely shove a person against a wall
with sarcasm—and no raised voices.
You had to be there, I guess.
You had to be us.
•
Lourdes Tutaine-Garcia © 2021
|
Lourdes Tutaine-Garcia is Cuban by birth, American by citizenship, Cuban-New Englander by culture. She lives in Mid-coast Maine where she listens to what the ocean has to say, then runs home to write it down. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Metafore, The Adanna Literary Journal, Avocet, and Cathexis Northwest Press. Blanket Sea nominated one of her poems for Sundress Publications 2019 Best of the Net. In 2018, BestLit Review selected her as one of the ten best prose writers in mid-coast Maine.