Glitter
My first reaction was to cover my face
as I felt the prickly glitter
landing there in showers
One-two-three-
and I blinked awake
to see your 3-year-old smile
chubby glitter-covered fingers
working above me.
“GRRR.... you woke the tickle monster!”
I started crawling after you across
the thick knobby carpet, shaking my head,
shedding colorful glitter from my face.
You ran giggling into the kitchen—
there was shelter between Mommy’s
soft black leggings and Truffles’
furry wiggling body and wagging tail.
Ohh.… No… the glitter-box
is no more.
No more of Truffles bounding to the door.
No more Joni in the kitchen cooking dinner.
No more smiles, wiggles, giggles.
It was just the tapping of
rain
on the roof
that woke me.
Robin Gabbert, 2022
PaPaw
When PaPaw was young
he looked like Sean Connery
dark hair slicked back and
a smile that said, I’m all that
and whipped cream on top.
A few decades later
he was rail thin, shoulders hunched,
wrist bones sticking out of his cuffs,
no hair to speak of.
We grandkids tiptoed around him.
He teased my little sister
after she found a sparkling black rock,
just sure it was black gold.
He told her, “No, that’s a pig turd.”
and he laughed and laughed.
Terri held her ground, mumbling
“NO, it’s black gold….”
Then he went to stoke the fire
in the big rusty oil drum where
he burned the trash every day.
He died when I was eleven.
I was sobbing after the funeral.
My Mom was touched.
I was just sad that we
missed the school play.
I had a lead role and
the funeral had taken all day.
Robin Gabbert, 2022
Poems from the 2023 Blue Light Press Summer Workshop
Dear Mr Kafka
You said:
The world will freely offer itself to you
to be unmasked. It has no choice,
it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Oh, that it were so…
but I fear today,
the world is playing
Hide and Seek.
It is immune to our charms
whirls in the solar system
playing games with Venus and Mars.
It is tired of being host
to parasitic humans who take
but give little in return.
Our invitation to the party
may soon be revoked,
our expiration
long overdue.
It seems we do not play
well with other species. We hunt
them to extinction, turn communal
air yellow, lungs black, rain poison,
refuse to take responsibility.
We cannot even agree among ourselves.
Our waste is legend. Our moon
fears becoming a dumping ground.
Our sun would like to shade his
view. Can you not feel his
wrath, in droughts and in fires?
Before too long Mr. Kafka,
the world may only
be home to
cockroaches.
Robin Gabbert, July 2023
Doors with No Numbers
Corridors long, doors without numbers
How to find my exam room?
Walking endlessly, then
at a desk, blue book ready but
no pen or pencil.
Everyone else is writing
The timer has started,
I can’t interrupt.
Then I’m writing
and writing for what seems like hours.
But when I peek back—
my work vanishes.
I watch the words I’ve written
fly into the air,
dissolve into the ether.
I want to banish all tests
from my dream-dance-card,
remove them from my menu.
Next time I’m running
by rooms with no numbers,
I’ll keep on walking.
Play hooky from class.
Look for the first exit.
Pull the fire alarm.
Flunk the exam.
After all, what can they do now?
Revoke my AARP card?
Robin Gabbert, July 2023
The Secret of Sisters
For My Sister Terri
is that there are no secrets.
Both were there as Mom cried
into her pillow when
Daddy didn’t come home.
Both licked their lips, eyes twinkling,
as she baked apple dumplings, served
up unconditional love.
Both sensed the country music singer
with the slicked back hair and ready smile
was a bad actor.
Both knew when Mom said we could
have a pony if we would move to the country,
it was probably a pipedream.
Both snuggled together in one twin bed
trying to pretend the sound of cockroaches scurrying
was something else.
Both made their own mistakes
when it came to judging
which men were worth keeping
and which should have
been tossed in the trash-bin
at the very beginning.
Both eventually understood,
having each other
was the best thing to have.
Robin Gabbert, August 2023
Wake Up and Smell the Pickles
Where have all the buttermilk biscuits gone?
No one makes chicken and dumplings anymore.
It’s all fast-food, French fries and fortune cookies
I’d like to return to sender.
Innocence of wildflowers trampled
by hippos in white wigs smoking cigars
oblivious to everything.
I dream we launch an orange Cheeto
into space and a million lion tails
rain into meadows.
Seeds of common-sense sprout,
fertile ground receives them gladly.
But the elephants stomp the fields.
We dream-walk and stumble,
tumble through our quotidian lives
hanging on to a potsticker
or a popsicle or partner
just trying to make sense
of these surreal times.
Sourness pervades.
Wake up and smell the pickles.
Robin Gabbert, July 2023
Ekphrastic Poetry 2023
Reckoning
based on Charlotte Salomon’s Painting “Dreaming of a Life in Heaven”
Mother, you lie in your red-quilted bed
Love in your eyes as you look at me, touch me.
As I leave, I do not notice your weak caress or
the hovering Angels that wait outside
to tally your sins, count your acts of kindness,
stand at their prism window like tellers
at a bank or ticket takers at the bus depot.
That came to me later in a dream.
I was not there when your soul rose to heaven in slices,
your life parsed
into slivers rising.
I wanted to rejoice.
A crowd awaited your arrival.
Some whispered, reproachful.
But there you stood.
Then suddenly I woke,
soaked in a cold sweat
recalling God—
perched at the entrance,
was not smiling
and had one hand
concealed behind his back.
Robin Gabbert, 2023
The Weight of Motherhood
Childbirth, 1950s Rural Ohio
The seed was planted three times
and three times lost. Once, it had doubled.
Finally, she survived the early months
without the bleeding, the wrenching sorrow.
Every day that passed without blood,
was a small miracle, more reason to take care
and to be afraid.
When the labor pains finally came,
it was still too soon by two months.
Despite her small body’s attempts to expel me,
even when her efforts were successful
with no anesthesia, she continued to suffer.
The sheath of skin that swaddled me
had grown fast to her womb,
was not leaving, without a struggle.
Possessed by an afterbirth
that refused to detach,
attended by an old-world doctor
who thought the ancient ways best,
we lay in a country hospital
separate beds — apart yet together.
Our eardrums becoming
etched with her screams.
Decades later the screams remain,
engraved, embedded.
Remembering, writing,
cannot erase the sound
of her suffering.
Robin Gabbert, 2022