Sadie Shorr-Parks

 
For God’s Sake

God changed once
God knew I was pregnant
sent signs and said these things
like, Sadie Jean, you know creation.
You know creation is reserved for the divine for a reason.

Then we didn’t talk
as I grew bigger and bigger.
One night, my palms on the globe of my belly,
God appeared by my bedside as a luminescent fog

and threatened to start writing poetry.
Then God switched gears, saying, I would never
make Eden here, while gesturing at the empty water
bottles and bare lightbulbs, and you’ll never make Eden period.

Then God turned
God’s back to me and whispered
Goodnight, small fool, before dissipating.
My husband entered and asked who I was arguing with.
For God’s sake, and to spare all three of us, I lied and said my computer.

 
Don't Mind Me

living lavishly in life’s lumps.
Even my toenail low days
have a hearty guffaw
that no one can quite get over.

I’m always having to settle the crowd
laying my arm like a feather boa
across the back of the sofa.

See me, dropping into my flop era
like a skateboarder (photogenic
with wind in my hair) swooping
down the half pipe

then I’m rising like seltzer bubbles,
sunning my hair, limbs toned
like I’m a clatter of keys lost on a veranda.

These days nobody talks about my short bones,
how they grew or when they hurt,
the years they showed.

Doctors love to measure my femur bones,
call in colleagues for a look at my proportions.
My daughter gets the same treatment
as she sashays across the sonogram.
Her body is a collection of heirloom limbs
I've been stowing in my trunk for months.