Even if two of my poems weren’t in this anthology, I’d still be singing its praises. From Connecticut to Ohio to Bend, Oregon, the poets assembled in this book write of their small towns but really write of all towns.
 
Some poems dwell in memories like “Remember the Clothesline.” Some poems dwell in the present like “Aldi’s Blues.” Some poems blend the two like this first stanza from George Ella Lyon’s poem titled “Where I’m From”:
 
            I am from clothespins,
            from Clorox and carbon-trtrachloride.
            I am from the dirt under the black porch.
           (Black, glistening
           it tasted like beets.)
           I am from the forsythia bush,
           the Dutch elm
           whose long gone limbs I remember
           as if they were my own.
 
At heart, each poem is about relationships -- with mothers, cousins, locker mates -- and what we learn from each other. And the book as a whole is so well-curated that each poem flows into the next almost as if written by the same poet. Kudos to the book’s editors, Tom Montag and David Graham!
 
I have several of these books so I could loan you one or if you want your own you’ll find order information here:
 
https://www.facebook.com/smalltownpoetry/
 
 

Alternately, Max Garland makes me want to write my brains out or stop writing completely. He's that great. He judged the recent Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring contest and I can't wait for his feedback on the poems I submitted. 

This poem of his from "The Word We Used For It" reminded me of the hollyhocks I recently saw driving in the neighborhood. A half dozen hollyhocks rose from concrete to ring a signpost in front of a business whose owners lost a child this year. Ghostly beauty.

My new favorite artist. By the time I found her, this painting was sold. Darn it! Not that I could have afforded it but a girl can dream. Here's an article about her exhibit in NYC. https://hyperallergic.com/506775/a-painter-shows-her-resentment-through-satire/

After weeks of seeing the same panhandlers near the freeway ramps I frequent, I decided I could no longer just avoid their signs, their gazes. So I put together care packages each of which contain socks, a protein bar and a package of Vitamin C-packed gummies. I haven’t seen a panhandler since. In their places are signs that read:
Keep the Change. Don’t Support Panhandling.
It’s a Milwaukee initiative to discourage panhandling and encourage people to instead donate to 18 charities which help homeless people. Here’s the initiative’s website:
https://city.milwaukee.gov/CommonCouncil/Initiatives/Keep-the-Change.htm#.XNmgUaR7k2w
But, in a Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service article, Guest House of Milwaukee Executive Director Cindy Krahenbuhl said the initiative’s message can sometimes be misconstrued.
“The message isn’t ‘don’t help people,’ but simply handing them money is not the means to do that.” Krahenbul recommends offering a sandwich or water rather than money.
https://milwaukeenns.org/2016/07/29/city-takes-stance-against-panhandling-with-keep-the-change-initiative/
So I feel OK that the packages still wait in my car, getting increasingly crumpled by the wear and tear of back seat rearrangements. But I’d feel better if they found their intended home.
 

Police are not allowed to snuff their red, white and blue strobes while in the presence of a suspect. Even if four squads are parked on your lawn. At 1 a.m. And the suspect is cuffed.
 
A jittery American flag light show, telegraph of shame.
 

One male boss greeted all his female staffers in the same way, a mumbling gruff “Ya’ ready?” The other women assured me after my first unsettling encounter, “He’s harmless.”
 
A fellow male condo owner rides the elevators all day and night and hits on females – visitors, workers, other condo owners. After one disturbing encounter with him, I was told by men and women alike, “He’s harmless.” One man added, “Probably.”
 
When I went through a weird period of being regularly accosted by flashers -- in the library, in my neighborhood, in Rome -- I was told, “They’re harmless.”
 
“Today's flasher is tomorrow's flasher,” Katherine Mair, a forensic psychologist, told a reporter in 1995. "These guys find flashing itself rewarding. They fantasize about what their victim is imagining.” https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/why-flashers-are-no-laughing-matter-even-when-the-victims-a-man-1621499.html. 28 May 1995
But in 2018, forensic psychologist Stephen Hart, argued, "It is a big mistake to dismiss flashing as a nuisance. Some flashers—whether or not they suffer from exhibitionism—also engage in other bad behavior, up to and including sexual assault. Some may start by flashing and then escalate to coercive acts such as rape."​ https://www.verywellfit.com/how-to-react-to-exhibitionists-and-indecent-exposure-3435773
So let’s get this straight. No person who exhibits inappropriate sexual behavior is harmless.   
 

I tear the gold cellophane tail from the outer package, flip open the carton, untuck the first Marlboro Light and, while I fiddle with a match, my lips embrace the burnished filter. And then I inhale. The first bits of tobacco tick, tick, tick as the flame consumes them, until an ember crowns.
 
And as I watch and listen at the party, the cigarette perched between my index and middle fingers, I lift my chin to meet the cigarette and inhale. And exhale. Lift. Inhale. Exhale.
 
For me, smoking was about posing like a dancer slipping from tendu to plie to releve. I think I was more addicted to the choreography than the nicotine.
 
Which is why I don’t understand vaping. A smoker hugs the e-cigarette in his fist, obscuring it as if embarrassed by his e-pen’s knobby ugliness or by his intimacy with what looks like a computer flash drive. Where’s the artfulness, the glamour?
 
Maybe grace is in the shopping for and loading of e-juice. Maybe it’s in the flavors. Maybe it’s just the straightforward lure of nicotine.

I packed light for a two-week trip to Australia. Three dresses. Two sweaters. And thankfully, one scarf. On the seventh day, after wearing each dress twice, fashion boredom descended. So, with the dresses as backdrops, one day I wore the scarf as a skirt, then as a sarong, then as a shawl. And in between I tied a sweater at my waist and fluffed the sleeves into flower shapes for a multi-function belt. I felt like a fashion goddess remaking my world in seven days.
 
When I told my friend, Annette, about this fashion feat she said, “Yup. A scarf is the duct tape of the fashion world.”
 
Duct tape. It fixes all ills. Even fashion ills.  

After watching “Ask Dr. Ruth,” a documentary about German-American sex therapist, media personality and author Dr. Ruth Westheimer, I wondered if she had friends, the type of friends who listen and question and are slow, very slow with solutions. A childhood longing for her parents who disappeared and ultimately were murdered in the Holocaust might have made her too thick-skinned for those kind of friends.     
 
I am not thick-skinned. “Toughen up.” “Just forget about it.” “Stop thinking about it.” When people said those kinds of things to me, it felt like a slap, like they thought less of me for being sensitive, for being thin-skinned. Those people did not become my good friends.
 
Still I felt a squeak of shame as I watched Dr. Ruth navigate the harsh media world with her ever-present smile. Until I thought about thick-skinned animals and their clod hopper ways. Elephant skin is one-inch thick in certain parts. Hippo skin is two-inches thick. That’s a lot of armor to carry when compared with human skin which is no more than .16 inches thick.
 
So I’m ready to I own my permeability as well as my fluidity of movement. And when my skin stiffens from the friction of moving forward, I will just shed it. Like a snake.

“We don’t heal without hurting. For a while, the cure for the pain is the pain.”
 
Mary Pipher in Women Rowing North.