Poetry by Betsy Mars

              ​yrjö jyske CC



An aggregation of longing
 
In the incubator, Mother's touch is missing. At one, I don a feather in my headband while my brother points his silver gun. I have only bow and arrows.
 
I pull my life saver over my snowsuit. In the summer of my third year we move to an ivy-draped apartment in Los Angeles where the central pool pulls at me year-round.
 
In Rio, we wait for our new home to be ready, breakfast arrives on a trolley. The silver urn steams with hot chocolate, the domed plates reveal slabs of butter, crusty rolls, tiny jam jars. We leave our spent tray outside the hotel room door and all the mess disappears.
 
Meu gato morreu I wrote in kindergarten Portuguese. I didn’t know that cat was never coming back. My mother said rats the size of bread loaves scurried in our headlights.
 
Back in LA, the boy with the chocolate eyes smiles at me from our first grade class photo.
Then we move again.
 
Across from my best friend’s house, a mother whose son is in Canada feeds his owl. She gives it bits of eggshell to help with digestion. What did I know about conscientious objection?
 
I hang on Bobby Kennedy's lisp and tousled hair as he urges us to unite, to end the war. Then his life bleeds out on the Ambassador Hotel kitchen floor.
 
On Linkletter at 10, I state that at 13 we’re old enough to date. Kids say the darndest things.
At 13, a boy demonstrates the 69 position with my stuffed animals, wants me to fellate,
assumes my submission.
 
After junior high we move again. My freshman crush dies five years later in a car crash.
The last time I saw Richard? At 17, recovering from a stroke, his basketball career ended
before his senior year.
 
My first break-up. I believe ice cream will fill the void. I believe voiding it will make me thin enough. A decade passes.
 
The dream of the nuclear family plays out. Four is not enough. I was not enough.
 
Three cancers and the cigarette experiment is over. I hold my mother's ashes.
 
An old love appears. We rekindle and rehash, he reneges. Ten years later in Houston, all hope 
gone, he rigs a rope to a doorknob. Pain slowly fades but I still have some of his ashes. 
When one door of happiness closes another one opens, they say. 
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Betsy Mars practices poetry, photography, pet maintenance, and publishes an occasional anthology through Kingly Street Press which she founded in 2019. In 2020, her poem was selected as a winner in Alexandria Quarterly´s first line poetry contest series. Her poetry has recently appeared in Sky Island Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky, as well as numerous anthologies and journals. She is a Best of the Net nominee and her photos have been featured in various journals. Betsy is the author of Alinea (Picture Show Press) and co-author of In the Muddle of the Night with Alan Walowitz (Arroyo Seco Press). 

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