Linda McCauley Freeman

At My Poetry Reading My Eyes Skip Over a Word

The entire audience sit mesmerized by my reading
or they are sleeping, or thinking about their to-do-list
or, more likely, the poems they are about to read
for open mic, when I read a line from my poem
that doesn't sound right, doesn't roll off my tongue
as it has a thousand times and I realize I've skipped
a word, a short but crucial word on which the whole
thing hangs. Now, awkward, gaping, gone. The line
has passed into air, no retraction, no excuses, only
the push forward--the figure skater who loses
her triple axel and stands smiling as if the thing
she dreaded most of all hadn't just happened.


Dinner at the Lucky Noodle

Both elbows of your plaid shirt—another I’ve never
seen—are on the table as you reach for the fried

noodles, dip them in duck sauce, crunch them whole
and you are laughing—those perfect white teeth

belying the photograph your orthodontist once showed
me of you at 12—your mouth an overcrowded city—

I think: How young you still look. And of the time
at the Stormville Flea Market when that man

asked you if your mother wanted to buy his books
and I realized he meant me. Your eyes are green today,

because of the shirt—I always loved that about your eyes
until even color did them no good. You are telling me

about her—or rather about you and her, since I’ve known
her nearly as long as you have, though evidently not as well.

You say she’s jealous of the 18-year-old girl on your job:
I swear, Lin, she looks like you, only you’re prettier.

Even the same mannerisms. And how hard it is for you.
But I’m stuck at you’re prettier and I want to shout

When did you think I was pretty? And reroll all our history
to that moment and live there with you.


What We Want

I.

I want an unblemished sky,
a rope hammock, a baby.

You want a fishing line,
a lure, a largemouth bass.

I don’t want black flies,
the sun in my eyes, the broken
branches.

You don’t want.

II.

I hold your feet on my lap
while we watch TV,
rub my fingers against
tiny hairs. But when I move
underneath to the smooth,
callused sole, you jump.
There is a part of you
I cannot touch. If I want
to hold you, I must accept
your conditions.

III.

The baby you won’t let me feel
inside stirs occasionally, a cat
startled. I cannot imagine life
without you so I live without
her. Since I have been so long
with you and without her,
this is easy until she returns,
this only child: round, tiny
bubbles at her mouth. I dress
her in fuzzy-footed pajamas,
tell her stories that make
her giggle. She wraps her arms
around me. When she is old enough
to borrow the car, she runs
errands, doesn’t break curfew.
She never misses Mother’s Day
or my birthday and when I am old
and you are gone, I have her.


About the Author

Linda McCauley Freeman is the author of two full-length poetry collections The Marriage Manual (Backroom Window Press, 2024) and The Family Plot (Backroom Window Press, 2022) and has been widely published in international journals, including in a Chinese translation. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been the featured U.S. poet in The Poet Magazine and won Grand Prize in StoriArts’ Maya Angelou poetry contest, and honorable mention in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards 2024. Lines from her poem Made in America were selected by Kwame Alexander to use in his Civil Community Poem and are on display at the Civil Rights Memorial Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. She has an MFA from Bennington College and is the former poet-in-residence of the Putnam Arts Council. She lives in the Hudson Valley, NY, where she is a swing dance teacher and a yoga instructor. Follow her at www.LindaMcCauleyFreeman.com, Facebook@LindaMcCauleyFreeman and Twitter@LindaMccFreeman.


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