Tamara Madison
by Tamara Madison
$16.00 ($4.63 US Shipping per order)
Tamara Madison grew up near the fault line in the California desert. Her poems have appeared in Chiron Review, the Worcester Review, A Year of Being Here, and many other print and online journals. Several of her poems have been featured on the Writers Almanac and the Lyric Life. She is the author the full-length poetry collections, Wild Domestic and Moraine, and the chapbook The Belly Remembers, all published by Pearl Editions. Along The Fault was published by Picture Show Press in 2022. Read more about her at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.
What You Can’t Give Away
The ragged whine of a weed whacker
claws at the air. From my window
I see the face of a man about my age
wielding his trimmer like a sword.
I am glad for him that the day is cool.
I have so much work of my own to do.
But no one is making me, no one
is paying me. I will eat breakfast.
I will shuffle some papers. I will go
for a swim in the cool green sea.
I will swim for the man my age
who cannot retire, who dips
his instrument like a ballet dancer
tipping his partner in arabesque.
I applaud him in my mind. For him,
I promise I will love my day.
Spray Rig
He drives a tractor fitted with pipes for arms
through rows of flowering citrus, lost
in a cloud of toxic chemicals. In the balmy
lemon-blossom evening, he’ll return home.
The house will quiver to his front door slam.
He will take a shower and still the reek
of the poisons will remain on his skin.
He will be edgy, angry, jumpy
as a seismograph needle in an earthquake.
All of us will tiptoe around him, afraid
to speak. Nothing is more important to him
than his trees. Not the scotch, not the steak
and salad, not even the charms of our radiant,
hardworking mother, will relieve him.
Nothing except the end of spring, the end
of spraying, will make him calm.
Every spring will pass this way until
the strokes come, fate’s strange gift.
Suddenly all things small will have
a deep new meaning for him. Until then,
he will exude this poison from all
his pores and he will hurl through his days
angry, tense, driven. But there will be
no dropping of blossoms in wind.
Maybe this year the farm will break even.
No pests to menace the crop, just rows
and rows of lemons.
