Tag: Pauli Dutton

Anniversary Song by Pauli Dutton

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Anniversary Song

Here’s to the man who shudders in staccato at the new sun.
A bandaged man, of 90 years, who soon after hip surgery,
carried his walker down the front steps and took out the garbage.
A man, who on our third date, handed me his Mensa card,
now asks the names of our grandchildren.
Before the wedding, I believed he could pen
an encyclopedia. A decade ago, his brain began its seep.
How he shook in the market deciding on ice cream,
shrieked at a dropped cup of coffee,
scolded a yellowed leaf on the rose tree.
Last year he screamed at line 54 of the 1040,
slapped the table again and again, roaring my name.
He thundered when I told him I’d made a date with a taxman,
then cried as he said, Thank you and asked,
Will you still be my wife? I touched his shoulder,
answered, Will you marry me?

*

Pauli Dutton is a former librarian. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, Writing in A Woman’s Voice; Verse Virtual, Quill & Parchment, The Pangolin Review, Altadena Poetry Review; and Spectrum Anthology. Her poem While Teaching Line Dancing was nominated by ONE ART for Orison Book’s Best Spiritual Literature 2022. She was the featured poet in Quill and Parchment, December 2024.

ONE ART’s nominations for Best Spiritual Literature

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~ ONE ART’s nominations for Orison Book’s Best Spiritual Literature (formerly The Orison Anthology) ~ 

Amit Majmudar – Constancy
Bracha K. Sharp – After The Questions
Jennifer Abod – At the Indian Ocean
Pauli Dutton – While Teaching Line Dancing at a Senior Center, Someone Accuses Me of Always Being Happy
Donna Spruijt-Metz – Day 0: Shekhinah
Robin Turner – The Unfolding

While Teaching Line Dancing at a Senior Center… by Pauli Dutton

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While Teaching Line Dancing at a Senior Center,
Someone Accuses Me of Always Being Happy

But who isn’t happy dancing?
When I read a book where the hero gives his life away
out of love, I cry for three days.
At the movies when the girl is attacked then tossed
from the high window, I run to the restroom.
I’ve been unhappy and terrified.
I’ve tried to escape the mind— scenes of mother’s
schizophrenia and its ricocheting effects
through a kaleidoscope of bustle.
Now, I teach myself to dance like a flower
to savor the fragrance of rosemary in the stew,
the chords of my husband’s proof-of-life snore,
and the satisfaction of each communal
kick and clap to an electric slide.
This keeps me bursting like a sky of fireworks,
which you mistake for joy.

*

Pauli Dutton has been published in Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Verse Virtual, The Pangolin Review, Better Than Starbucks, Altadena Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She was a librarian for 40 years, where she founded, coordinated, and led a public reading series from 2003 – 2014. She has served on the Selection Committees for The Altadena Literary Review in 2020 and The Altadena Poetry Review from 2015 – 2019. She also co-edited the 2017 and 2018 editions. Pauli holds an MLIS from the University of Southern California.