PATTI GREENBERG

(This feature is part of TRUCK’s Theme Issue on the List or Catalog Poem. You can go HERE for an Index of the Participating Poets.)

3 POEMS 

WE ALL SIGNED THE WAIVER AND CONSENT FORM

I need new moss for my bedroom.

The correct hand placement on a steering wheel is now 4 and 8.

Always remove a rabbit's gut system before cooking and eating your kill.

I know how to hula.

If you want to eat less, eat naked.

I arrive late and bring too much.

You will need all your worldly possessions in the afterlife.

I can't tolerate changing seasons.

The bottom line is how your butt looks.

Fred loved to square dance.

Duck sex is rough sex.

I forgot to get pens.

If an adolescent girl's tonsils are removed, she will grow larger breasts.

I can kill mosquitoes, house flies, silver fish, centipedes, moths, ants and maybe 

          ticks with my bare hands.

Lizards bring me luck.

The driver who cut you off is later than you.

The torture of dull theater soothes me.

Non-hearing people sign the funniest fart jokes.

I grew a mega-snake.

I can't hear you.

I like choreographed violence.

Prince charming isn't able to come.

Family closeness is overrated.

Dorm living or living in an igloo.

I STOP WHEN I GET TIRED.

All drivers must be able to swear.

Cold is a state of mind, never buy a coat.

Paul told me he was self cleaning.

Always keep a carnivorous pet, not a ruminating herbivore.

Leave everything out so you know where it is.

I wear the same clothes everyday.

The driver I let get in front of me will take the last moment of the yellow light.

Spring cleaning is a cruel deception.

Nothing personal.

Mostly I observe.

I am on Biblical time.

Never put a piece of sponge up your nose.

Mother and Father taught me to eat faster.

Letters have more frosting than numbers.

There are no more chances.

The driver tail-gating me is an actual asshole.

I believe in minerals but not vitamins.

People who skip kindergarten are more likely to go to war.

I dislike everything about Frank Sinatra.

I slept through my teens and woke up at twenty.

Salacious.

When I was a high school math teacher I spat out the window and had a heart

          attack.

I was supposed to be an only child from a different planet.

IT'S NOT A CONTEST.

A tiny troll gives me the best advice.

No one has been designated to toss old food or empty containers out of the fridge.

It's not poetry.

I'm afraid of the dark and it's my job to watch the door.

Match-making and arranging marriages are fast-growth employment opportunities.

Everyone I know talks too fast.

A diet of blubber.

Be prepared to live outside.

I'm starting to sweat.

Landscape paintings are best.

I'm not a sadist but I like to show off.

I don't know, what are you having?

Good posture is caused by swimming the backstroke.

Lists are boring.

Vampires are real and I want to be one.

400 Blows

We are disappearing all the time.

I want the boy in the blue canoe.

Arbitrary tipping.

I stole.

You lied.

Ned survives on hickory smoked bacon.

The boy scouts did the plumbing and electrical.

YOU CAN STOP ANYTIME.

I never learned calculus or how to gamble.

Lars turns the tv on loud to get to sleep.

Reveal something primordial

Primordial is better than promotional.

Being petty is a big job.

Who am I again?

Redundant.  YOU HAVE TO LEAVE.

These toilets are better than those toilets.

EXHAUSTIVE, INCLUSIVE, EXACT WORDS

Notify me when it's time to eat or be somewhere.

I promised the trees I would misrepresent bears to children.

Omens can be.

My personal super hero suffers from hubris but is a gifted editor.

I have been a camel.

Neutrality is a challenge but try to remember the baguette in the oven.

Ungulates, ruminants and lagomorphs, but not rodents.

I can tell by your  face I'm repeating myself but I'm in too deep to stop.

EVERY TIME AND ANY TIME.

I like wearing an offensive mask.

Copying anything is punishable by death.

Trust is like jello.

I saw a religious leader jump from a black rock.

I can exaggerate acceptably.

I stayed on though I saw them yawn.

Cave life makes Karen dark and horny.

I'm vetting idols .

I'm tired of Woody Allen.

Eyebrows are an example of evolutionary success.

What I need now more than anything is a tree house.

WHEN HE SAID THAT'S ENOUGH HE MEANT SHUT THE FUCK UP.

My imaginary friends grew up.

Being tedious is a mortal sin.

I'm just saying.

I'm not the only one who ever put a dead pet in the fridge.

WAIT! I'M ALMOST DONE!

The baby is a peach.

Someone stole the manual.

Don't tell me what to do.

What should I do?

MY SON : TRUE/FALSE

My son is a doctor.     

My son is a lawyer.       

My son is a plumber.

My son was a most wanted child.

My son is disturbed, unbalanced and homeless.

My son's birth was remarkably smooth.

My son was premature. Complications in delivery left lasting damage.

My son finished high school early and went to Harvard.

My son was a feared and hated bully.

My son was the class clown.

My son's favorite color is blue-violet.

My son overpowered and brutally sodomized a childhood friend.

My son tap danced as a child.

My son dropped out of high school.

My son is a senator with presidential aspirations.

My son is a meth addict.

My son was a blue eyed blond baby boy.

My son grew tall dark and handsome.

My son embezzled money.

My son is a talented jazz musician.

My son is a developmentally disabled albino dwarf.

My son is obese and has diabetes.

My son was school newspaper editor, senior class president and prom king.

My son is an astrophysicist.

My son is the CEO.

My son is a drug dealer connected to a Mexican cartel.

My son was tried as an adult while still a juvenile.

My son is a linebacker for the Florida Seminoles.

My son has a third nipple.

My son is nearsighted.

My son is a good boy, average joe, regular guy.

My son is a masochistic foot fetishist.

My son works for Doctors Without Borders.

My son poisoned, mutilated and skinned my neighbor's cat.

My son won the Nobel Prize for his work in mathematics.

My son is a psychopath.

My son has a successful start-up creating software in silicone valley.

My son is a public defender and works for the ACLU.

My son is a sociopathic serial killer, 37 grisly victims and counting.

My son is in prison.

My son is on death row.

My son sits in full lotus.

My son won a Pulitzer for his photos of war in Afghanistan.

My son married a wonderful woman and has five gifted children.

My son is gay and HIV positive.

My son is devoted to mixed martial arts, cage fighting and standup comedy.

My son is tall and sterile.

My son is a coal miner in Kentucky.

My son struggles with secondary sexual characteristics.

My son is a professional high stakes poker player and reality tv star.

My son speaks nine languages.

My son likes lima beans and gluten-free desserts.

My son works for UNICEF, freeing child soldiers.

My son rescues girls and boys entrapped in sexual slavery.

My son is a pedophile and registered sex offender.

My son plays it safe.

My son is a race car driver.

My son drives a taxi.

My son depends on others to be normal.

My son has a DUI and severely injured a child with his car.

My son works hard to stall climate change.

My son is a decorated marine and served in Iraq.

My son has traumatic brain injury and PTSD.

My son stepped on an IED and lost his legs.

My son worked for the IRS, got fired, and is on welfare.

My son is Poet Laureate of the United States.

My son is a cross dressing transsexual with aspirations toward organic date farming.

My son is my dog.

My son is handy and fixes things in my house.

My son figured out my insurance and all my finances.

My son takes care of me as my health begins to fail.

My son carries me when I can no longer walk.

My son comes to my doctor appointments when I can no longer hear or understand.

My son does not let me linger in my pain.

My son cradles me in his arms and lowers me into my grave.

My son runs my funeral and designs my headstone.

My son scatters my ashes in the Pacific off the coast of Baja.

My son loves me forever.

My son never calls and never comes at all.

MY SON : PART 2

final   leave   baby   deep

asleep   pretending   sweet drift primordial

sorrow sea   more sleep awake   ocean  lake

altar   sacrifice   blood   flesh   stem   stern   limb   self

night before   begin   didn't know   not ready   washed grief

night before   betrayal seaweed stick   swells cervix open

promise  crushed   hospital   walk with help

questions misunderstood arrows

naked   no rings   cold metal table   body jumps   limbs taped down

terrible knowing   fight going under   hearing last

coming to   fighting going under   recovery room  bright lights  brisk nurses

ripped out   alone   single life   underwater   betrayal   sorrow

they're all relieved   still showing   milk comes   breasts of rock

false comfort of right choice   say   no   son   no Kleinfelter's boy

move in one week    mother   mother-in-law   sister   help  me  move    

sift through everything    revealed   

regular fat woman to new neighbors    how many do you have