Poetry by Bobbie Lee Lovell

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​She says

her lack of discipline is a coping mechanism.
The earth keeps shaking beneath her,
so why bother with plans and protocol?

Her calendar is a hoard of maybes.
She binge-watches a reality show about
the super morbidly obese, understands

how food can become the only reliable thing,
that pizza and chocolate are faithfully delicious.
This is an epiphany: means becomes end.

She has swallowed the Acme earthquake pills
Wile E. Coyote intended for The Road Runner
and cannot stop shaking in a way that compounds

rather than offsets. She once sold out for love,
but love was a box of sparklers in a cold house
during a Midwestern winter: ooh-ah, then gone.

She ordered a lifetime of Thanksgiving dinners,
got a bag of in-flight peanuts. Now, all she wants
is a smaller appetite. And stillness, blessed stillness.





How to Find Your Strengths

Wake up. Listen. Open your arms
to the world. Open your mouth
to whatever flies in or out:
bats or butterflies, truth or lies.
Then stop talking. Lift
all the heavy things and see
which ones stay aloft. Juggle
the others until they crash-land. 
Attempt a diving catch — just once --
then get up and walk away.
Fly away. Commit serial escape
until you discover a new continent.
Realize it has already been discovered,
and that you have everything
to learn from the natives.
Look every person in the eye.
Turn yourself inside out: be that kind
of brave. Shake it all loose,
shake the colors from the gray matter.
Take inventory if you want.
Say a prayer if you want.
Then give it all away — every last bit --
and take note of what you have left.

​
​

Bobbie Lee Lovell won the 2020 Janet Dee Wullner-Faiss Memorial Prize for Poetry,  is the author of Proposition at the Walk-In Infinity Chamber (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She lives in Wisconsin with her two teen children and has a career in graphic design and print production. bobbieleelovell.com

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