On the talk show, the psychologist was telling the guests,
three brothers, that they needed to work through their anger
at their parents in order to move on with their lives,
and I thought of how it would be if my sons characterized
me forever by my worst action, the meanest thing
I’d ever said. Not by the nights I’d cradled each
like a privilege in my tired arms, or listened anxiously
for their tires in the driveway. I pictured them writing poems
about how I’d hurt them, blaming me for crimes I didn’t
realize I’d committed, and achieving, in this expression,
a certain relief. And then I saw my father waiting
up on the old blue couch, needing me to return
as much as I had needed to go away, so oblivious
to what he’d done to me, he was almost innocent.
Sally Lipton Derringer was a manuscript finalist for the Tampa Review Prize, New Issues Prize, Poets Out Loud Prize, and a semifinalist for the Brittingham Prize. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Los Angeles Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Solstice, Nimrod, December, Journal of the American Medical Association, and others.
* * * Sally Lipton Derringer is a three-time Musepaper Poem Prize winner! * * *
MUSEPAPER POEM PRIZE #17
MUSEPAPER POEM PRIZE #34
MUSEPAPER POEM PRIZE #50
FEBRUARY 19, 2020 / MUSEPAPER POEM PRIZE #50 / THE COUCH