From the published poet, UCSC writing teacher and mother of two, a pair of poems about modern life.
From the published poet, UCSC writing teacher and mother of two, a pair of poems about modern life.
Time Off
gym drive, GYN drive
adjunct faculty union meeting drive
dental hygienist best storyteller in town high-on-gas drive
School Board protest-budget-cuts-meeting drive
Dollar Store Easter basket gee-gaws drive
pinched-nerve-in-neck MRI drive
Costco rotate tires drive
Pain Clinic cortisone shot drive
bloody stool dog-to-vet drive
swing by Subways-for-dinner drive
pick-up orthotics podiatrist drive
prescribing psychiatrist monthly check-in drive
summer job fingerprinting at county building wait-in-line drive
smarmy money-grubbing orthodontist drive
Band fundraiser pizza-dinner drive
Movie Group on werewolves drive
dog food, dog meds, bird seed at box store drive
take-in-car-to-mechanic replace ignition coil drive
pediatrician cream-for-foot-fungus drive
Outdoor World camping equipment list drive
optometrist annual drops-in-eyes dark glasses drive
college counselor meeting strive drive
overpriced periodontist implant drive
silent auction charter school drive
Saturday teen bowling league drive
tae-kwon-do class sit-on-hard-bench-and-read drive
summer-job-CPR training drive
ukulele club jive drive
Friday night Thai take-out drive
no public transport
no friends
no community
gun-to-head
drive
drive
Ode to Trade-offs
Walk outside to the garbage cans,
realize that being mugged
while always out of your hands,
is one less thing to make you bugged.
Not a single soul’s around,
your feet crunch loud on the gravel
yet you feel safe hands down,
savoring the stars from the ground,
a sense of well-being untrammeled,
life’s good in a gated town.
Dion Farquhar was born in 1947, formed by the Sixties, and repudiates nothing. A poet and fiction writer, she chose adjuncting in New York over tenure track in a rural burb, only to be catapulted out of her city by love years later. In 2000, she gave up being bicoastal and now loves Santa Cruz, though she continues to scratch in the post-apocalyptic redwood dust for work. She teaches frosh core at UCSC, writing at San Jose City College, and is an online tutor at Golden Gate University, while relishing life with her partner and their twin teenage sons. She still misses the old country of Manhattan—especially her friends, family and off-off Broadway theater. Recent poems are in New Delta Review, Cricket Online Review, Shampoo, The Southeast Review, Dark Sky Magazine, moria, BlazeVOX, Shifter, etc. Her chapbook Cleaving won first prize at Poets Corner Press in 2007, and her first poetry book Feet First was published in November 2010 by Evening Street Press.
Local Poets, Local Inspiration, edited by Robert Sward, appears weekly online and monthly in Santa Cruz Weekly. Selections are by invitation.
