~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Barbara Hamby

Ode to My Squirrels

My New Year's resolution was to stop using Kleenex, 

            because I live in the allergy capital of the world, 

and I have asthma, and I’m always sniffling, sneezing, 

            blowing my nose or wiping it, and it’s crazy

how much Kleenex I use, boxes in every room, 

            wadded-up tissues all over the place,

and this has been going on for a long time, because

            my college boyfriend used to call them squirrels,

as in, “Would you clean up your squirrels?” or “Your

            squirrels are taking over the world,”

and I stopped using paper towels twenty years ago,

            because my husband and I were living in Paris,

and I realized that the French do not use paper towels

            the way we do, so I bought a stack of dishtowels,

which I’d wash and reuse, and along with composting,

            I was feeling pretty organic and ecological

until the squirrel population started to get out of control,

            and I was cleaning out a closet and came across

a box of handkerchiefs that I’d bought years ago

            at an estate sale, some lacy and some bold

and geometrical, so I thought if I could give up paper

            towels then I could give up tissues, and voila

I did, and it’s September now, so I think I can safely

            say that this resolution is a resounding success,

though not as much fun as the ones where I resolved

            to drink more champagne or buy more shoes

or look up at the night sky, but shopping leaves

            a lot to be desired as evidenced by all those

boxes of shoes from Paris, Rome, and Barcelona 

            that don’t even fit anymore, and I doubt

eschewing paper tissues will in any way change

            global warming, but at least I won’t wash 

a load of black clothes and find I missed an errant

            squirrel in one of the pockets and find it

flindered all through a load which will have to be

            relaundered to get rid of the flecks of paper,

and I suppose next is toilet paper, and I’ve been looking

            at those little Japanese water gizmos,

but I suppose I’d have to reserve paper for guests,

            but who knows when we’ll be having guests

over or if we’ll even be alive as the Delta variant blows

            through Florida, and a train of hurricanes

is lining up in the Caribbean, while others are forming

            off the coast of Africa, but I have my little

victories to cheer me on as I stand here in my island

            in the middle of my psychic sea, with no

squirrels in sight while the world rages on, delirious

            with horror but still hoping the birds will return

for another bout of spring, which the Italians call

            primavera, which translates as “first flowering,”

and when the trees start leafing, the truth is I am singing

            the song but I have forgotten most of the words.

Ode to Momentary Loves

You don't even know who you are, girl with the sharp bangs

            who I stare at across the restaurant while he

tells me he doesn't love me anymore or the blonde

            with the purple scarf at the production of Cabaret,

I know I'll never see you again, or like tonight

            the conga drummer in the funk band at a friend's

birthday bash, and there's nothing gorgeous about him

            with his bulk, blue tie-dyed T shirt, and lank

blond hair, and you've got to love how he doesn't crack

            a smile—ever—because cracking is how

we telegraph that everything is okay, when it so isn't,

            so Mr. Conga is a truth teller in his way

though it's probably just DNA—two introvert musical

            parents, a lot of fat shaming, and a sense

of rhythm that comes out on all those weird instruments,

            like the one that looks like a love child

of a flyswatter and a lacrosse ball on a stick,

            and after the set he tells me it was first used

in reggae, but what was it made of in Jamaica? These

            momentary crushes are a subset of the big love,

which is such a piece of luck that millions of books

            have been written about it or the hunt for it,

while momentary love is the work of an instant, a fizz

            in an otherwise ordinary drink or a slice of light

in a bank of clouds or Beethoven's gastric troubles

            rising in the horn section in the third movement

of his Eroica Symphony, and the medieval medical

            categories of choler, phlegm, bile, and blood,

but now Prince is on the sound system, and his "Kiss"

            is forever a momentary love, but the live music

starts again, and the young guitar god has a barrette

            to keep his greasy hair out of his face,

and the singer is belting out "Son of a Preacher Man,"

            and I can't help but think of Dusty Springfield,

whose big voice came out of my transistor radio

            in 1966, singing "You Don't Have to Say

You Love Me," and I was half-little girl and half-teen,

            and I didn't know what was going on,

but I could see that love was a lot more complicated

            than I had been led to believe, but what isn't,

because we stroll along and then someone you know

            is shot jogging or a war starts out of nowhere,

and seventeen years later it's still going on, or a virus

            jumps from a bat to a chicken, and pow

there are no parties, no dancing, no nothing but sitting around

            and thinking this is the time to really learn

to speak French, so parlez-vous francais, mon amour,

            or whoever you happen to be at this moment in time.

Ode to Mushrooms, Scumbags, and the Other Half of the Orange

After days of rain we walk out to look for chanterelles,

            bright yellow fungi nestled in the wet leaves

of oaks and pine needles, and this is my Russian fantasy

            come true but in my own neighborhood,

the scene in Anna Karenina when Levin and Kitty go

            out with their guests, and Levin’s brother

is about to propose to Vavara, but the children run into

            the scene, and Vavara says the wrong thing

in Sergei’s mind and the moment passes and they go back

            to their single lives, and as I lift the mushrooms

out of the ground I see how any life is made of these moments,

            and not speaking is as essential as speaking,

you never know when your dreams will come true

            or even what your dreams are until they run a red light

and smash your back fender which you have to take to a body shop

            and who should be waiting for his battered Chevette

but a man in a Rolling Stones T shirt and ratty jeans,

            and when you marry, like Kitty and Levin

you have a hard time getting used to living together,

            he has so many rules and you don't like any of them,

but you're both young, and you love to have sex with each other,

            and then there's poetry and Italy and you buy a cookbook

and learn how to make lobster ravioli and little toasts of chevre chaud,

            and walk outside and try to grow roses, which are an utter

fiasco, but along the way learn how to tell a daisy from dianthus,

            coneflower from coreopsis, because half the fun

is the lingo you pick up along the way, and there are a zillion

            words and half the time we use them and have no idea

where they came from, like scumbag, which started out as slang

            for a condom but now is used to describe a degenerate,

pervert, a slob, weirdo, crud, slimeball, sleaze, and isn’t skeeze

            a combo of skank and sleaze, but who knows, as when

I said someone was “too thought-y” and Diamond told me

            that meant she was slutty, which was kind of the opposite

of what I was thinking, so sure even when he revs up

            the rhythm and blues when all you want

is the second movement of Schubert's trio in E-minor,

            you are nothing if not crazy about his slinky hips

and I think the Spanish phrase—media naranja—the other half

            of an orange—the marriage of two persons so well paired

that each half forms a perfect blending of the whole,

            but then there’s the saying, “If a cat has kittens in the oven,

it doesn’t make them biscuits,” which means what? I don’t know,

            a phrase that is proving to be if not my motto

then my mantra, which Hindus use to connect with the infinite,

            and my lack of knowledge seems infinite like all the oceans

of Earth and what I know an island the size of my backyard,

            where I am sitting and thinking about the mushroom tart

I just put in the oven and whether I want to open the Brouilly

            or just sit for a moment and listen to the mockingbirds

mimicking the song of a cardinal or maybe rip off my clothes

    run down the street singing Vissi arte, vissi amore

though I can’t sing, and I’m certainly not Tosca, but if I were

            that’s what I’d sing, or maybe I’m so lonesome I could die.

Barbara Hamby is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo (2021), Bird Odyssey (2018) and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014), all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009).

She was a 2010 Guggenheim fellow in Poetry and her book of short stories, Lester Higata’s 20th Century, won the 2010 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Yale Review, and The New York Times. She has also edited an anthology of poems, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009), with her husband, David Kirby. She teaches at Florida State University.