Matthew Guenette, winner of the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award, expresses his gratitude and shares two poems from his winning book, Vasectomania, published by the University of Akron Press: Photo: Aliza Rand
Someone Has to Make a List
Call the contractors and not get
bullied into saying yes. Someone
has to drag the push-mower
back to the shed before
it rains, before rust ruins its blades.
Someone has to go into the yard
and rave, shirtless and un-
showered, at the cats
who mean
to shit in the garden.
Someone
has to sandblast dried
sauce
from the plates. Plant beans.
Make
sure everyone has at
least
one thing. Someone has to find
the cards missing from the board
game, locate the princess flip-
flops, read Dr. Seuss over and over
no matter how blue or red.
Someone has to give high-fives
and say hello, wipe the spilled
milk before it congeals, before the table
becomes a milky stamp.
Someone has to collect the stray
mini-wheats
beneath the
bed.
Someone has to love this,
has to make oatmeal (clothing optional),
has to go down to the basement
and throw it all away: the
molding
memories,
the files and
instructions to
who-
knows-what, out-of-style
shorts
and shirts, books and books
and books but definitely not
the guitar that needs new strings
and pegs and definitely not
the drums. Someone has to assume,
has to resonate, has to find
where the remote is buried in the un-
vacuumed couch, which means
someone has to vacuum
the cushions, which means
someone
first must borrow
or buy
a vacuum.
Someone
must be
sure,
be vigilante with
leftovers,
be certain no sugar
sweetens
the counters lest the ants
start marching. Someone has to flower,
has to measure and simmer
and bundle and sweep, adjust the antenna,
turn it all on and off and on again
without crying, but why does it
have to be me?
Adjustable Beds
We’re in hospital beds on an empty stage,
my bare feet sticking out from the covers,
my mother (dead now 10 years)
in the next bed over (sitting upright
in her adjustable bed), dressed like a nurse,
an IV infusing her with a silvery light.
When the curtain rises, it’s not on an audience
or an empty auditorium but the cosmos itself.
A deep space of stars, swirling galaxies.
My mother smiles. She has this look.
“See?” she says. “I told you.