Poem in the Best Haiku 2022 International Anthology:
A Spring Day Teases
A spring day teases
Sakura blossoms blushing
the shade of her cheeks
For Iris
I think of you, even though we don’t speak anymore. I remember when I tried to jump from the backseat of your boyfriend’s car—slipping on fine gravel, him running over my foot.
You helped me limp to your house, cleaned my gritty wound, wrapped my bruised and bloody foot. I remember walking barefoot on the Toucan Trail in summer until calluses, like old shoe leather, took up residence on our feet.
We danced at the Spring Hill Community Center Saturday nights to rotating bands that played Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress and Evil Woman. Always hoping to meet someone new, someone besides the guys from school who smelled like Hai Karate or our Dads’ Old Spice. We were inseparable until I went to college and you got married. Then our paths diverged for years.
But we found our youthful glee again, for a short reunion weekend in 2013. You told me about your adventures in “Online Dating Hell” — The men who forgot to take off their wedding rings before posting profile pictures on Match.com (and about the ones who did, but you later wished had kept them on). We laughed so hard… all the years vanished. It was as if decades and five kids had not intervened.
But then we learned a new lesson: Our joy could not survive dirty politics and fake news. The 2016 election taught us that. A friendship died along with the conscience of a Nation. I was so angry with you. Now, I’m just sad. Sad because we’ll never get back to those moments when we could laugh at Larry in his too short cut-offs or dish about what a good kisser Dean was, and because I wanted to always be able to call you my friend.
But, fallen leaves we try
to put back onto trees, sadly
flutter their own way.
Robin Gabbert, 2018-2022
Involuntary Alarm
My body clock has set itself
to follow the rhythm
of the building crew.
Hammers pound and loaded vehicles
BEEP BEEP BEEP their way backwards
and into my sleeping brain,
rousing it to semi-consciousness.
I reach for my ear plugs
but know the gesture
will bring few extra ZZZs.
I am awake, mind racing.
I know that if I try to sleep now,
all I can expect
are dreams
of hard-hatted Lilliputians
tying me down and
climbing into my ears
with tiny jackhammers
and pneumatic nail-guns.
Robin Gabbert, November 2020
Observing the Night Sky
after Jim McDonald’s Painting Cosmos
Are you a comet
shooting across
the sky
so black and lonely?
or
are you just a daisy
plucked to your core,
then launched into the abyss
by those final words
She loves me not?
Robin Gabbert, November 2020
Writing Poetry in My Sleep
Eyes close, heartbeat slows.
Mind floating in the ephemera.
This is when I do my best work.
Blank Page Syndrome (BPS)
I wonder if white might become my new favorite color?
It’s the one I see the most, day after day,
lonely cursor blinking at its glowing edge.
It’s the color of snow, an egg (well some),
Italian marble, squishy marshmallows,
and luminous ghosts.
Perhaps I should be happy to see a blank
page, free from the detritus of my mind.
No evidence of that internal struggle—
the glacial, constipated lack of movement
toward words being typed on a page
just to be deleted, juggled, cursed at.
Maybe, white
is the new black. So, for the moment
I’ll savor these white-out conditions,
lose myself in this eternal field of lint,
make a swirling tornado of milky intent,
and lie down until this chalky oblivion takes me
to its heaven of alabaster or hell of ashen descent.
Robin Gabbert, 2022
Dental Hygiene
I close my eyes because it’s better that way.
The light is bright above, and
I know the drill, so to speak.
The hygienist is giving me instructions
which I understand, although they sound
like parents do in Peanuts cartoons.
She starts by measuring my gum recession —
Calling out numbers to a colleague: 3-2, 3-3, 2-2
while piercing my gums with a pointy crooked wire.
At least that’s what’s on the end of the instrument
I can see when I open my eyes.
She says my numbers have improved,
but I find my hands, clasped together in my lap,
still unnaturally gripping each other — as if
by some magnetic force. Even as I’m trying to relax.
She asks if I’m okay with “the ultrasonic”
“Sure,” I say. Not sure I know what
that means. Then the sound brings it back.
There is a high-pitched squeaking-squealing
behind pressure noise. It sounds like a wee mouse is
being tortured with a water cannon. Repeatedly.
Once that is done, we move on to scaling.
I picture a tiny mountain climber on my teeth. This will be better, I think.
The reality is a scraping sensation, a garden trowel abrading stones (or gnomes).
I try not to think about it that way. Instead
I think about fish being scaled on a stainless
steel sink. Somehow, that doesn’t help.
Then I’m ready for a polish, and I breathe a
sigh of relief knowing this is the final stretch.
The hygienist sends me home with fluoride rinse
and instructions to return in six months.
I’m already dreading it, so I swear to start
flossing— regularly. And I mean it.
Robin Gabbert
Nose Job
I was the serious big sister.
There for support. You
smiling (you were always
smiling) — unworried, being prepped.
The wait while you were under dragged on…
I stared at wallpaper, tongue depressor beige.
Paged through fashion magazines
from the waiting room,
but kept wondering— did you really need
a rhinoplasty?
Yes, your nose was a little
crooked, not unlike mine.
When you came back, you were
not smiling. Bandages cocooned
your face. There was purple and
black swelling where your eyes
had been. The room seemed hot,
the walls now melting. Nausea
like morning sickness swept me.
I wasn’t pregnant.
Then I was on the floor.
Later I drove you home.
You slept sitting up on the couch.
Your head a thundercloud—
dark shadows with occasional
showers, or rather, leakage.
I slept on the floor beside you
suppressing my own storm.
Robin Gabbert