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Girlfriend Over for Dinner
She's very pretty, Mother said,
but she's going to leave you.
She was talking about her future,
& you weren't in it,
so I asked her to tell it to me again,
just in case she made a mistake
& left you out, but you weren't
in the second version either
.
She talked about going away to school,
& when I asked her what
she was planning to bring with her,
she talked about her coat,
her boots, but she never mentioned you.
She says she's fond of you,
but people say that
about puppies they're about to give away.
New Sheets
I won't be around forever, Mother said.
One day I'm going to die, so I might
as well nag you a little bit more,
while I have the chance. And when
I'm dead you'll have to rely on someone else
to tell you that it's time to change the sheets,
& I hope for your sake, that it won't
be your wife, because she's going to get
tired of doing it, & she'll start to demand that you
& her sleep on separate beds, which will mean
that pretty soon you'll have to be using separate silverware,
so she won't always have to be the one to wash them.
And before you know it, she'll want you
to live in your own house so you
won't be able to mess up hers, & divorce is more likely
to happen when you aren't living together.
DEFORMED FINGER
Don�t stick your finger in the ketchup bottle,
Mother said. It might get stuck, &
then you�ll have to wait for your father
to get home to pull it out. He
won�t be happy to find a dirty fingernail
squirming in the ketchup that he�s going to use
on his hamburger. He�ll yank it out so hard
that for the rest of your life you won�t
be able to wear a ring on that finger.
And if you ever get a girlfriend, &
you hold hands, she�s bound to ask you
why one of your fingers is deformed,
& you�ll be obligated to tell her how
you didn�t listen to your mother, &
insisted on playing with a ketchup bottle,
& she�ll get to thinking, he probably won�t
listen to me either, & she�ll push your hand away
HORNS ON YOUR HEAD
The further you venture from the house,
Mother said, the fewer people you�ll know.
Everyone on this block has either heard
of you or has seen you at one time. But
on the next block maybe only one person
will recognize you. Then there are hundreds
of blocks where no one knows you exist.
And it goes on that way until you get
to Nebraska, where it gets even worse.
There, the people never met a Jew before.
They think you have horns, & will want
to look for them. That�s why you should never move
too far away from me. You don�t want
strangers to always be touching your head.
No More Birthdays
Don't swing the umbrella in the store,
Mother said.� There are all these glass jars
of spaghetti sauce above your head
that can fall on you, and you can die.
Then you won't be able to go to tonight's party,
or go to the bowling alley tomorrow.
And instead of celebrating your birthday
with soda and cake, we'll have
anniversaries of your death with tea
and crackers.� And your father and I won't
be able to eat spaghetti anymore, because
the marinara sauce will remind us of you.
Birthday
If you don�t do your chores,
Mother said, I won�t let you
have a birthday party & instead
of being nine, you�ll be eight
for another year & none of your
friends will want to play with someone
younger than them.
A Bum's Life
You're going to be a bum, Mother said,
if you're not one already, but you'll
soon find out that even a bum
has to work hard convincing people
that he's really poor. When it rains
you can't stand out there holding
an umbrella, & ask for money, but
you have to get wet, because the more
you drip, the more sympathy you'll get
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