Sample Poems by Dory Hudspeth
To Prevent Tears
Some people hold a match
between their teeth and others
wag a piece of bread, half in,
half out of their mouths.
Some say tears are from harvests
in the wrong moon sign,
shaggy root ends, or the past
season’s drought. The knife
moves as steadily as time.
Those careless cuts throb
and grief comes ever closer.
Crayola Anxiety
When visiting grown-ups
run out of things to say,
after, my how you’ve grown,
they begin to question the children.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I answer with shoulders not words.
Then a waxy voice says, what
is your favorite color?
Why do I have to choose
between the yellow sun
and the green tree,
my father’s blue eyes
and Mom’s brown hair?
When I draw her picture
her head turns lumpy.
I try to make the brown waves
she puts there with pin curls,
held in bobby pin X’s.
I can’t draw our house either.
It is white. With only white paper
it becomes a silence with windows.
Flowers are easier to draw,
but is a tulip really better than a daisy?
Is the crayon without a point,
most worn, the one to love most?
Juicy Fruit Sundays
might have been a lesson in frugality
or was it something else, an even larger
lesson anyway you got only half
a stick of gum just before preaching started
because you weren’t supposed
to swallow it, for you would surely die,
and you weren’t supposed to stick
it on anything, pews or hymnals
or Mrs. Saddler’s fox fur collar
with its sad eyes, and Mother
would be mortified if you put
it in the offering plate, you weren’t
supposed to make noise, chewing
or smacking or blowing bubbles
or put it in the preacher’s hand
as you go out the door and you
weren’t supposed to hold the little wad of it
out on the tip of your tongue during hallelujahs.
Jumping Through Hoops
As I fill out forms,
consider applications,
deadlines and requirements,
lend me the skill of frogs
their amphibian grace
and perfect sense of time.
How do they know
how to do it? Each time
they land exactly
in the center of that ripple
ring in the pond
to the applause of splash.