POETRY

 

Hope Chest

Mother and I exchanged secrets
the night before I left for college.

I told her
how much happier
I would have been growing
up without my father.
How I dreamed of divorce
or death.

How a packed duffel bag
hid in my closet
since I was 13. The underwear
didn't even fit anymore.

In this last infantile need,
I exposed her to 18 years
of ooze. She took it well,
and traded me a box.

Corrugated, black
bean 48-count bulk.
I remember now,
there was no odor
when I opened it.
Inside were things I knew
my father never touched.

Mint green Kama Sutra massage cream,
        the dried-out cork cap waxy and crusty;
Newspaper adult tabloids from the 70s,
        naked men matted with hair and chubby;
A penis-extender;
Strawberry body lotion that heats skin with breath;
The Mole,
        a vibrating dildo with a rat-shaped appendage,
        its nose two inches of plastic meant to tickle
        the clitoris;
Naughty novels "She" and "Nephews and Aunts;"
Handcuffs,
        tags still attached, purple furred for gentle surrender.

Moving every three months,
it was easy to forget a storage payment.
Everything mom's new apartment
and my duffle did not fit was gone -
the contents auctioned off, unopened.

To have seen the eyes
of the highest bidder
when he opened the box of
my mother's sex toys....