Chicken Spaghetti

In This Poem You’ll Find Some Coffee

Because I once made a list of
Everything I’d like to see in a poem
And it started with coffee.

I knew what I knew
But when I wrote it all out
It didn’t make me feel happy,
Only a little less mysterious.

I haven’t made a list of
Everybody I’d like to 
See still alive, but at the top
Would be Mom, Dad, and Auntie.

Auntie told the cousins 
That my apartment wasn’t
Big enough to swing a cat in
And that my mother loaded
The dishwasher wrong.

Mom and I liked to drink coffee
Every day around three
Sometimes she’d made a cake and
We’d have that, too.

I can’t remember
If cake is on my list 
But it should be.

Dad talked to me in Spanish
He was from Texas and he
Loved to speak Spanish
When I got to sixth grade
I knew madre, padre, casa, and 
All the Mexican phrases for hurry up.

I never told any of them
About being drunk in the Village
And ordering espresso when I meant
Cappuccino and how disappointed
I was in the size of the cup and the taste.

I’d love a conversation with Auntie
About the right ways to load a dishwasher.

Draft, Susan Thomsen, 2026

*****

I wrote this while reading Human Hours, Catherine Barnett's 2018 collection published by Graywolf Press. I liked the way one of the poems started with the title as the first line, which solves a problem I was worrying about last week. Also, in "Uncertainty Principle at Dawn," the speaker mentioned "a list of obsessions" (I don't want to quote any more; it's so good and I don't want to spoil it), and I thought, "Oh, lists, yes, I have lists galore!"

Robyn Hood Black rounds up the Poetry Friday contributions on February 13th.

Please join me here at Chicken Spaghetti for Poetry Friday next week, when I'll be wearing a colorful hostess outfit and passing canapés. If you'd like to, you can write from the same prompt I used: begin a poem with the last line of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," which is “I stop somewhere waiting for you.” Details here.  First-time participants are always welcome.

Photo by Susan Thomsen