Sara Lupita Olivares

3 poems

**


This vexed persona


I roll my eyes. Say that I suppose I am a working class girl.

I suppose I like men wrapped in wire, it reminds me
of the slow labor of vines. There's the idea that they may breathe
into blossoms, threats even, that they'll burst into the inconceivable
but only if the sun can manage the right angle and these are only ideas.

Should I stay? Nursing a list of slight miscalculations. Too modern,
but I read about it in the Sunday paper. Said,
This is how you'll keep yourself busy. So I guess I should.

But I'm warning you. I cannot tie a tie. I forget to water flowers.
They coil back into bulbs and you will learn to hate me, but I'm fine
with small talk. Fine with ignoring you, ignoring me. Do you remember,
me breaking my wine glass onto the fence? You laughed. Hushed me,
said Lush, brushed me inside, said, That is no way to start a garden.

I'm telling you. These are warnings.

**


Hush. Do we really need more?


Outside by the fence.
The east side of the field.
Where we go to sit and watch

The sky on screens of barbed wire
With the scarecrow that sneezes toxic dust
To shake any feather.

Meet me.

I will bring my lucky penny to trade
For a single strawberry seed.
In such light

You won’t see that I
Am just another
Corn-fed girl.

**


Move over, you're in my Promise Land


If you don't mind being sold things
you're going to be fine.

But I'm having trouble
with the bathroom door and it's key

at the laundromat. I know it's on
this big wooden block

so I'm sure no one has tried
stashing it anywhere too delicate

but you have to wonder. Can't
I just stick a quarter somewhere instead?

I have been soaking my change lately,
and the water grows lilies,

a film over the top
like the reflections of clouds off of a pond.

There's this whole life force
in one single quarter. Now

this could be nice,
but a dangerous type of nice.

An overwhelming, I need to be an activist
in some new ways, type of nice.

Every exchange, interchangeable
as a greeting card, asking the laundromat tenant

if I can just spend the night because I think
I've paid enough for rent, and I'm not

trying to be crazy, or even clingy Miss –
I just feel like I'm re-buying my wardrobe

week by week and harvesting new illnesses,
keeping all of the organisms

I've forced off my change
in old margarine containers

only to lack enough heart
for keeping them there.

**

return to sawbuck 4.4

**
Sara Lupita Olivares is a graduate from Western Michigan University where she studied Creative Writing and Holistic Health Care. She spends much of her time being your catastrophe waitress but when she is not playing that active role, she works teaching poetry to parolees and knitting long, long scarves.