You’ve been there since the beginning
Nepotism, I guess they’d call it
No application or interview required
The job was yours
Sight unseen
After 20 years, you must be an expert in your field
Right?
The Perfect Child
At least, that’s what you’d expect your title to be
At this point
You haven’t been told anything to the contrary
And then you get married
And you realize that maybe
Just maybe
You’re not perfect
And perhaps a bit ungrateful
But you’re not that bad
Right?
You did your chores
When you were reminded
Pleaded with
Threatened
And then you have a child
Of your own
And you begin to realize
The position
You believe you earned
When in reality
You were gifted it
Slowly it dawns on you
You should have been fired years ago
Yet, you never got a termination notice
Or meetings warning you
Of all the ways you could improve
You just coasted
Your feeble "thank you’s" didn’t even scratch the surface
But how could they?
And then you have a baby
And realize
There are infinite more things to thank for
Sowing the earth
watering the seeds
nights when the bed goes uncrumpled
textbooks dutifully stacked
with the words needed to get through the day.
All before you even had a memory
And were able to thank them
But hey
That’s love for you
Unconditional
From the first moment
You were awarded tenure
Never a second thought
Better late then never
That’s what they say
Right?
Thanks Mom and Dad
OK, so I think I have a handle on what is going on here, at least until the ending. I read this as the "you" being a child who is implicitly addressed by her parents, until the ending, when the speaker turns the tables and directly thanks her parents.
ReplyDeleteI think the poem combines the family poem theme with the controlling metaphor theme. The position of the child in the family is rendered with the metaphor of a job (I think).
This metaphor has the potential to be quite funny, as in your second line, with its comparison of a family position to "nepotism."
But the poem, as it unfolds, seems to give up trying the things we've been learning in class, especially showing and not telling emotions and feelings. I think this poem will be more engaging and effective if you use descriptive imagery instead of abstract labels for your feelings and ideas.
For example, let's take this stanza:
And then you have a baby
And realize
There are infinite more things to thank for
Providing life
Sustaining life
Sleepless nights
Education
Emotional support
All before you even had a memory
And were able to thank them
I get really bogged down in the list of abstractions in the middle. These labels for things refuse to allow me to see, hear, touch, smell, or taste them, and it doesn't help that they are stranded on these really short lines. I feel this would be much better if you replaced the abstractions with concrete representations that convey the abstraction you have replaced. For example:
And then you have a baby
And realize more thankful things:
greens shoots peeping through new soil,
pulling life up to the sun.
Nights of crumpled sheets and twisted limbs,
textbooks dutifully stacked,
the phone ringing at just the right moment
with the words needed to get through the day.
All before you even had a memory
And were able to thank them
The work of a poet is to make us see, hear, and feel emotions and ideas, rather than presenting them rhetorically with abstractions. I would like to see how this poem comes out if written with this in mind.
There is a powerful framework here to work with.