Janet Buck
USA



Janet Buck is a seven-time Pushcart Nominee. Her work has appeared in hundreds of journals worldwide. Janet's second print collection of poetry, Tickets to a Closing Play, was the winner of the 2002 Gival Press Poetry Award and her third collection, Beckoned By The Reckoning, was released by PoetWorks Press in the spring of 2004. Her most recent work has appeared in The Pedestal Magazine and Offcourse. In 2011, Buck was honored as a Featured Poet of the Editor's Circle inPoetryMagazine.com.  In the spring of 2015, Janet was a featured Poet of the Week for PoetrySuperHighway.com. More of her work is scheduled for publication in various journals this coming year. She is 59 years old and lives and writes in Central Point, Oregon, USA.
Ears of Corn
 
Walking feels like eating corn
without a tooth. I love the smell,
the taste of salt, mixed with sugar
born in pebbles from the sun.
Standing straight is out of reach.
I grab a bar inside the shower,
stretch muscles of old rubber bands.
Still I hunch like ostriches,
their skinny legs shaking
from the weight they hold.
Once I watched them in a zoo,
thought it was my bathroom mirror.
 
Leaning just to brush my teeth’s a full-time job.
I’m spitting anger in the sink.
The country swing my husband
holds inside a dream,
he promises will happen soon—
the fluid steps, the triple spins,
the thumping beat,
that touch of being light as air—
I blow into an empty bottle
meant for pills, close the cap,
screw it tight, screw it tighter once again,
shove it in a bed stand drawer,
catch my fingers on the wood.
 
For dinner, he buys bags of corn.
I ask him where the butter is.

 

 

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