Domestic Tranquility
My boyfriend helps so much around my place.
He washes dishes when he hopes for sex.
He makes iced tea, then leaves the empty trays.
Refilling them, it seems, is too complex.
He has the time, he just got fired—again.
He uses my computer for his search.
But if I poke my head into the den
He’ll close the browser with a sudden lurch.
He folds my bras because he loves my breasts.
All other laundry’s strictly on its own.
He eagerly complies with my requests,
But only when he needs another loan.
I’ll hire some help and then I’ll let him go.
It’s simpler just to pay for it, you know.
Class Reunion R.S.V.P.—Not Attending
I don’t live in the past, much less the place
where we were raised, a nondivergent group.
I’m so complacent with my life and space,
nostalgia doesn’t play its endless loop.
I barely recognize a face or two.
And names? They’re even more a fuzzy blur,
despite my yearbook used in vain review—
now is that Joyce? Or Jane? Or Jennifer?
Most didn’t care about me in the least.
They weren’t unkind, just blithely unaware.
The pals I really liked are all deceased—
I’d have no one to schmooze with, were I there.
I’ve nothing left in common with that lot.
Besides, they’re old—and you can see, I’m not.
Lida Bushloper writes in multiple genres. Her stories have appeared in confession magazines and mystery magazines, including Kings River Life, Flash-Bang Mysteries, and Mysterical-e. Her poems have appeared in The Lyric, The Formalist, Light Quarterly, Grit, and Gerald So’s The Five-Two. Her academic work has appeared in The Huntington Library Quarterly and The Explicator. A memoir about her sister is included in the anthology In Celebration of Sisters, released in November, 2017. In 1995, she was the winner of the Academy of American Poets and Henri Coulette Memorial Poetry Award, sponsored by California State University, Los Angeles. Visit her blog at http://lidabushloper.wordpress.com