She is driving four children here and there,
from the shameful return of late library books,
to the grocery store for garbanzo beans, seedless
cucumbers, corn tortillas. She stows children
and bags in their proper compartments, ignoring
all complaints as she turns the radio from Disney to NPR. There,
there it is, Garrison Keiler’s soothing voice,
a heavy quilt. Fireside calm
lulls her as he reads on and on
the polished verse of the laureates. They carry her
up and down carefully constructed hills of inflection,
over lanyards and pears, across the desert with nomadic tribes
into summer moons of contagious self-reflection.
It is times like these
Garrison Keiler slips his velvet tongue
into my narration
he softens my tone
buttons my blouse
censors the “mother-fuckers”
adds indefinite articles
and even punctuates the hell out of it
into something nearly APF approved
of course I can never remember the word
order the tone the scent of soap he is gone
As she stops at a traffic light her hands
relax their grip on the the wheel
she inhales the first moment of
stillness in her day and knows
it must be our turn soo
