Rethinking Pink
I hated pink.
It surrounded me
in my mother’s
Chicago kitchen:
bubble-gum pink tiles,
café curtains, counter tops,
the dial-up wall phone.
Pink, the color I ran away from,
my mother’s version
of who I was supposed to be.
In my kitchen, I fold
a muted pink bath towel,
remember, how it complimented
Angela’s wet brown shoulders,
her clear eyes,
reminds me why I keep
one frayed pink-cotton turtleneck,
in my closet,
Two pink-plastic flowered bottles,
on my bathroom shelf.
*
Dance Lesson
Angela and I
would dance
in the living room,
on a sidewalk,
at the beach
I had four decades
to memorize her dancing,
how it stirred the air
That last time,
her flowered dress,
legs at rest
in the wheelchair,
I sway her arms
high and wide
her eyes,
like pools of rain
in moonlight.
Now, wherever I am,
and a soulful beat
takes hold,
I dance,
She’d want me
to let sorrow go.
*
Dr. Jennifer Abod is an award-winning filmmaker and radio broadcaster. Her poems appear in Sinister Wisdom, ONE ART: a journal of poetry and The Metro Washington Weekly, and are forthcoming in Wild Crone Wisdom, and Artemis Journal. Jennifer was the singer in the pioneering New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band (1970-1976). For the past year, she’s been singing jazz standards and contemporary tunes every Thursday night at Chez Bacchus a restaurant, in Long Beach, CA.