BABY BOOK

Smoke Break

What do you think about
When you close your eyes at night—

The mind finds a pain to chew on,
Worrying it like a dog with a bone.
The regrets of the day flood fast,
The unsaid, the forgotten, the unsalvageable.

Perhaps your deepest sin leers at you
Or your toes curl with familiar shame.
How do you block out
The sublimated panic—

The trouble is you’re not awake enough
Or asleep enough,
Your mental defenses are caught
Taking a smoke break
Do you want to berate your consciousness
For letting the bad guys in—

Rubber Duck

Its cheerful rubber smile
Reassures the reluctant bather—
A toddler’s toy the color of summer sun,
It bobs so happily in the water
That it’s a shame to cut off its head.

But there’s villainy to be dealt with here,
What looks like black snot
Floating in the water—
Its source revealed
At the duck’s decapitation.

That yellow duck deceived me,
Looking so jaunty in the waves
While inside grew the most awful stuff.
Still greater is the deception
I practice every day.

I am the rubber duck, bobbing through
The waves of life I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine

Baby Book

They say a picture is worth a thousand words
But perhaps it invents a thousand instead,
Conjuring two generations of men who loved me—
The first a smiling grandfather with wholesome features,
Seen as eternally pleased with his granddaughter.

Or the photograph of a great-grandfather in a rocking chair,
Ears like the wings on an airplane,
His large hands and argyle sweater
Spinning the story of just another staid life
Spent in hard work and churchgoing,

Though he too does not look at the camera,
As if they both knew that thirty years later
The baby each held would squint to see
If she could find the cruelty somewhere on their faces,
The disappointment, the infidelity.

The photographs were my only story
And I obligingly filled in the blanks, though
I want to blame them for my own assumptions.
A child replaced memory with image,
But the woman, history with disinterest.

Honors

There’s a fat woman in the background
Shielding herself from the sun
And another woman frowning,
People who didn’t want to be
At that graduation, either,
Just like my parents,
Who showed up late and
Didn’t even get a picture with their graduate.

I wear a big smile in the photo,
My pale face heavily accented by
The hot spring sunshine of a California day.
I’m decked in all kinds of ribbons and tassels,
Even a red-and-white pin.

In case you’re wondering I was summa cum laude,
And the medal was for best student,
An honor that decreased significantly
In the eyes of my parents
Once they learned it wasn’t out of the whole school
But just my particular discipline.
I was sure proud of it, enough to wear my medal
To dinner one night,
Something I’m sure they still laugh about.

Here I stand, beaming,
To the one person who did want to take my picture
And then charge me thirty-five dollars to buy it.

My literal and metaphorical moment in the sun
Haunts me from my floating shelf,
Now clouded with shadows of the heart.
Perhaps I’ll take it down and
Put it with the cords and tassels,
Which I still have somewhere,
Curled up in a box in a dark place.

District Meeting

Even the word obfuscate
Itself is hard to say
I misspelled it myself just now
Which nicely illustrates
Its meaning

The more polished they are
The more figurative the language
“Headwinds” in the global market
Makes us sound like
Vikings conquering an enemy

Instead of what we are
Farmers trying to sell our crops
To an international market
As limp as overcooked spaghetti

“Hand to mouth” is how she describes
The cautious buyer
Which sounds a bit like a children’s virus
That involves polka-dotted sores on little
Hands, feet, and mouths

And I think of how I disregard
The red meat at the grocery store
Because of the price tag
Aren’t we all “hand to mouth”?
Inflation is the newest form of rationing

Tell it to us straight
How bad will the bad years be
What are you doing to help us
Feed our children and pay our employees
When will rock bottom come into view

Cami Rumble is a mom and writer who graduated from California State University Stanislaus with an English degree. A member of the California Writer’s Club, her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in TMP Magazine, Levitate, Oprelle Publications, and Poetry Breakfast, as well as several local anthologies. Cami lives in California’s Central Valley