Shira Richman - Poems
About Shira Richman
Shira Richman won the Richard Hugo House 2006 New Works Competition. The poems she submitted are published below.
Shira started writing poetry seriously about three years ago, in a Hugo House class. Since that time, she has taken several other poetry classes, and is now pursuing an M.F.A. in poetry at
Poems
By Shira Richman
My Favorite Stepmother
Was not the one who snapped her gum
and let me chew whole packs of Hubba Bubba,
not the one with pigtails who could ice skate
backwards or the one who let me watch Nickelodeon
all night, not the one who gave me a silver dollar
and let me wear her lipstick, not the one
who took me horseback riding
or the one who bought me a matching bikini
and took me snorkeling off the spike heel of Italy.
It was the one who examined each house I drew
and noticed how each shingle hid
under the one above it, how each brick
held fast to the ones around it. She noticed
the many frames in which windows can sit
and all the ways in which windows open.
She never asked if I wanted a beautiful house.
She told me, "Someday you will build cities."
Living off the Land
"Let's take a walk," my mother said
when I asked for a piece of gum.
Her skirt flounced as she pranced
past the grocery store. "Look,"
she said as she peeled a bright pink lump
from under a bus stop bench.
"Mmm, strawberry." She pointed to a blue
spot on the sidewalk, a white wad
on a trash can. "It's like an Easter egg
hunt." I pulled a purple piece
from a newspaper stand. A woman
with grape hair and an umbrella
clicked her tongue and said, "That's disgusting."
I chewed slowly, looking from her closed umbrella
to the sun. At home Mama rolled her gum
in fruit punch Kool-Aid. I rolled mine in blue
raspberry. We swung in the hammock
blowing bubbles until the gum lost its shape.
"It's like overcooked sandy spinach,"
I said, so we swallowed it.
Minor Sounds
In the Toys 'R Us parking lot people stare
as we pile out of the Monte Carlo
with red plush seats. A woman pauses
as she pulls her toddler free
from the straps of a stroller.
A man grabs the hand of his daughter.
Children watch from windows of vans
and station wagons. One boy walks up to us
and touches the perfectly polished black body,
leaving a streak of peanut butter.
"Damn," you say, as you pull
your curls from your head with a pick.
"What I got to go through to get you girls
roller skates." Shay calls you dad.
You're the only man she remembers
who threw her in the air and caught her.
Claire calls you dad. She remembers
when you read aloud, "Could Anything Be Worse?"
Because I remember your face in the window
of the door as Mama closed the curtains,
and because I remember her weeping
in her nightgown as she wandered
from the bedroom to the kitchen to the yard,
I call you Dan. Besides, the tongue swallows
the ends of so many words. It almost sounds right.
Rabbit Hunt
The night Chico's fingers closed in on Mama's neck
he drove us through Aunt Clara's field of waist-high
grass in the silver Impala, polished shiny as his bald head.
"Catch that rabbit," he told me. "Gotta grab it by the neck."
As I slid out the window I heard Mama whisper, "Are you high?"
I crouched in the grass and touched the rabbit's trembling head.
"Now grab her,"
"This neck," he growled over Mama's high breaths, "goes to my head."
We forgot to be afraid of the woods the night
Domino threw bottles out the windows.
The dirt path was so packed that it let our tap tap shoes
tap all the way to Little Bear's camper. "Domino's
been drinking?" he asked as he scooped us up and held us,
one in each arm. Little Bear ran past the pine trees
that shook their needles like brushes on cymbals
while I pressed my eyelids to the pulse of his neck.
He set us down on the hollow porch of the plywood cabin,
and as he opened the door, we saw Grandma
fall on a chair in the corner. I wanted Little Bear
to throw Domino, but instead he wrapped him
in his flannel arms, rocked him in big swaying circles
as if he wanted to make Domino dizzy
or needed to untangle the ropes from which he hung.
