Svea Barrett

​To You, America  

Because the museum is in the middle of the Pine Barrens. Because there is a sculpture called Chicken Man which is a chicken with thick human legs and a penis, and Deer Woman which is a deer head with breasts, but with antlers. Because the sculpture I’m standing in front of now is a map of you made of latex gloves that hang like condoms, and I was disappointed  that it wasn't actually made of condoms. Because my late mother-in-law picked up Popsicle sticks, made pencil cases out of yogurt cups with old yarn because Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Because she'd have laughed I think, appreciated a map of you made of used condoms, though  I doubt she'd have touched them herself. Because this sculpture is beautiful and weird like you, and what if it was condoms and beautiful, even close up? Because at the school in NY City all the kids wore hoodies for Trayvon, colours glowing over Facebook, softening the ugliness of posted comments below. Because you're the terrified people who wanted to cut down all the trees on the island after the hurricane because they might fall on the house, and the guy on my street who built his deck around the double birch in his yard. Leaves in the barbecue? he says, fuck yeah, whatever. Because leave my goddamn guns alone, but wait, are you ok? Does your car need a jump, a tow? Here, I brought you dinner. Because you’re the 24 hour drugstore when my son had a fever—103  at 3 AM, and the little old lady who saw my pajamas and children’s Advil and let me cut in line, but you’re also the poor people who shop at Walmart, ignoring the poor people who work at Walmart. Because Hurricane Sandy. 9-11. Sandy Hook. Because George Floyd, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti. Tornado Alley. Because rainbow flags and Donald Trump. Because the Debt ceiling. Taxes. Because fresh peaches. Because fresh sweet corn in a basket on a table beside the road in upstate NY, next to a box with cash sitting next to a handwritten sign: Please Pay What You Can.  Thanks.

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This piece previously appeared in Rat's Ass Review.

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The Dream: At the Old House Where I Grew Up

I was using the one bathroom upstairs and my dead mom walked right in and calmly spoke to me as I tried to wipe use as much toilet paper as you want your dad doesn’t understand my sister and girl cousins all walked in too and I tried to wash my hands but the sink wasn’t working it had paint all over it all fluorescent colours I barely got clean as the others waited to use it  in the pink bedroom with its slanted ceilings Rich tucked a pillow under my side of the bed I said you should do that at our house and the bed won’t slant down so much two AC units blasted one from each window turned into old radio tape player boom boxes I couldn’t figure out how to turn them off I couldn’t find my phone I stepped out the bedroom door  into a receiving line to say good bye to a mafia dude after having dinner at his house with my ex who’d left me alone several times to go and change his clothes I was almost last in line I wore two different earrings each from a pair of my mom’s I was pissed at myself for losing them in the dream I was afraid I would fall as the line of people wound downhill on a slippery sidewalk in December and powder sugar snow as Mom called it covered the ice like the day my dad broke his hip on the driveway. Where was Rich? He always held my hand, held me up. My ex was ten people ahead of me in line already I reached for the next hand to shake it was my dead father he squeezed my hand in both of his and said I told you, my mother put up with my dad for too long, if he’s not going to change you need to leave him. Then my brother, the one who’s a guidance counselor at my old high school, pulled up next to me in the little old yellow Honda Fit I used to drive and opened the door. People don’t change, he said, get in, I’ll take you home.  

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Revealing

God appeared to me in the bathtub.
Hugh Findlay

If God appeared to me in the bathtub I’d scream. First of all I seldom take baths, preferring a quick shower on my slip proof mat since falling on ice and re-injuring that knee twice already. So If I’m in the tub it’s due to a special need for relaxation, and if God is an old man with a white beard like in the paintings, why is He staring like a perve at a 61 year old overweight woman naked in her bath?  

If God is a She it’s still a problem, as I don't like changing in women’s locker rooms either, I could never be a nudist, I don’t even walk around naked in front of my cats. And even if, more likely, God is gender neutral, what a seriously weird-ass way to appear to anyone. Why not just be a voice in my head? OK, yeah, I might think I was losing my shit hearing voices. Better yet, appear to me in a field of daisies in spring, or under an orange oak in the fall, or even on my balcony overlooking the parking lot–anywhere clothing isn't optional. 

Not sure what I’d say to Her anyway: Hey, God? What the hell about letting my son die 30 years ago? Was there a point to that? And thanks for my other three sons, they’re great, and the second husband is perfect, even though everyone told me you weren’t fond of divorce. 

So why here, God? If it’s news of an early stairway to heaven, why not send an angel? I hope You don’t have any great expectations of me at my age, because after my 35 years of helping high school kids understand themselves and being a second mom to a lot of them, and after a dead child, a divorce, a dead mom, a brother with cancer, a disabled dad, and the loss of three sweet dogs and a cat, I thought I might be in line for a little rest. 

I’m still helping my youngest with money and all the kids with visits and laundry and late night chats, and we’re moving north to be closer to my dad, so maybe, get out of my bathroom?  Cause I’m one of those people who really like their privacy, and I would have expected You to know that. 

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Records

after watching a woman make snack bowls and bookends by melting and molding old vinyl records

When we had a little extra money Dad would buy records for the little machine we used to keep in the dining room--Connie Frances, Big Bands, Harry Belafonte, soundtrack from The Jungle Book. Once when I was twelve he bought the album from Hair.  Mom hid it, said it wasn’t appropriate for us kids, but my brother, who was thirteen, found it on the top shelf of the upstairs linen closet, under the lace table cloth only used for Thanksgiving. Some of the songs were pretty, like "Good Morning Starshine." The one she didn’t want us to hear had lots of strange words. “Masturbation” was the only one I knew. If my brother knew any others, he didn't say.

I brought all my records to college--so much weight and space--milk crates full. Turntable and speakers I bought myself from babysitting. Debbie from Long Island, across the hall, played hers and then threw them on the floor where they skidded across other naked vinyl. Terry, the thin boy from Kansas, alphabetized his shelved collection, cleaned them with a special brush before and after he played them, every time. Boys in our dorm broke into his room, took every record out and put them all back in the wrong jackets. When he discovered this Terry closed his eyes like someone had died.

Last week Dad suddenly wanted his record player down from the attic. In the video my sister sent, Dad’s in his wheelchair, hands clasped in his lap, head bent towards the record which is playing the music from Carmen. His eighty-eight year old knees pop up and down with the beat.  Dad’s puffy cat, Pushkin, sits next to the turntable, stubby tail flicking, head tilted, attentive. She could be listening too, or ready to pounce on the spinning disc.

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This poem previously appeared in Edison Literary Review.

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I used to believe nothing really bad could ever happen to me. 

I used to dream of three story Victorian houses with towers and canopy beds and a fireplace in every room that would light whenever I wanted. Once when I was twelve, at a garage sale, my mother said I could pick one thing she would buy for me, and I found a pair of pure silk kimono pajamas. I had chosen the one thing we couldn’t afford. 

These days I’m happy picking up three smooth stones if we go to the shore, one for each of my living sons. I don’t even look at the shops with the boho dresses and sea glass necklaces I used to drool for. 

I used to be this innocent person, in college I didn’t drink for the first three years.  I used to trust people more, used to trust the world, trust myself. Then I tried to ski and messed up my knee. Tried marriage and got a divorce the first time. Had babies and the first one died. Voted every time.

My father slipped on the ice in his driveway and broke his hip, ended his life in a wheelchair. My mother got cancer and died within two months. My first son was born with a fatal heart condition. Now I worry about my grown sons all the time, don’t blame them for wondering if they should have any kids in this world, walk holding onto my husband’s hand, buy spikes for my boots for days like today when the ice coats everything and the wind wants one of our giant maples.

But my husband chipped away at the thick bubbled ice on our driveway for almost three hours. And we lost internet and cable but the lights are still on so far and the mail man just crunched through the ice coated snow in our front yard to deliver a package from one of my sons. And the crows are flying in for the night again, tens of dozens of hundreds of them, storm or no storm they’re flying in to roost in our trees and the terrible wind can’t cover the beautiful shrill survival I hear in their calls.

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Svea Barrett is retired after teaching public high school English in New Jersey for 35 years, now living in Central NY with her husband and three cats. Her poems have appeared or will appear in The Comstock Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Griffel, The Kelsey Review, Edison Literary Review, The Rat’s Ass Review, Exit 13, Molecule– A Tiny lit Mag, and others. Her chapbook Why I Collect Moose won the Poets Corner Press Chapbook Competition in 2005, and her book I Tell Random People About You won the 2010 Spire Poetry Award. She tied for first place in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry contest in 2013, and her  manuscript, Before There Was So Much Sky, was a finalist in the 2022 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Book Contest.