Brick porch. Oz books. Ice water.
That’s what I remember
Of a cross-the-street friendship
That lonely summer.
Inside, her mother, white-faced and silent
By the cold fireplace. Susan said
She was dead and all that time
I believed. Instead, the crazy place
Where women shrieked or were endlessly
Wordless. The housekeeper shuffled
In darkened rooms. Dorothy knew the flying
Monkeys were less to be feared than the witch
Who dissolved in water. So that was all it took.
Susan said no one can force you to do anything.
Sail away in the ruined house to meet
The heartless and the brainless. Here you’ll be queen
Of the misinterpreted. If you believe
Anything, believe this.
More sojourners than friends, we shared
No confidences. Susan preached. I heard.
Later, they said she fucked any boy that wanted her.
Ran away until her father, at a loss,
Sent her somewhere. Rumor of a child
Strangled like the bird who sang until she
Could no longer bear it. The black tomcat
With yellow eyes who sat
At her feet sheathing and unsheathing its claws.
She was brilliant, skipped two grades,
Expelled for cursing a nun, she kept
Sucking those ice cubes on hot summer afternoons
While we met a boy transformed
To the Princess of Oz.
Of course, she was older, of course, I listened,
Flattered to be chosen if only by proximity.
We walked that emerald road together
Like smugglers, each of us keeping
Our precious secrets. Drinking ice water
From tall glasses. If I yearned for something sweet
I’d never admit it. A black sedan came
To take away the mother who might as well be dead.
All you need is courage, the art of refusal.
Don’t ever let them make you,
Susan said.
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Editor’s Note: This poem is from the Open Arts Forum’s archives. It was originally posted on 24 July 2018. Joan Colby was a member of OAF for a few years. Here is an excerpt from her obituary: Joan Marie Colby, a poet and writer of the Midwest for nearly all her life, liked to say that she worked “anywhere a poem would strike”, so important to capture a poem in the moment, “like photographing a bird before it flies away.” She died on August 18, 2020, surrounded by her family. She was 81 years old.
