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Poems by LEE VINCENT

ON MY DAUGHTER'S ARTFUL RHETORIC |
CHICKEN SOUP | SATURDAY NIGHT RITUAL

Lee Vincent is a marketing communications writer and consultant who specializes in advertising and public relations for business-to- business and consumer corporations. She has owned and operated the Word Projects agency since 1979. Previously, she directed the public relations and sales promotion activities for divisions of The Boeing Company and Litton Industries, and was the editorof the Beverage Retailer Weekly. Lee's articles have appeared in Data Management, Training, Office Products News, The Office and other periodicals. She is a member of The Authors Guild and The Authors League, and holds a B.A. in English Literature from Rider University where she minored in Sociology. Prior to entering the business arena, Lee was a social worker in Camden, New Jersey. In addition, she has been active as a community service volunteer for the past 30 years.

ON MY DAUGHTER'S ARTFUL RHETORIC

It's no myth
that while I feigned sleep,
peeked:
you stole
into my bedroom
before daybreak,
when you liked to scale
the pink-blanketed Alps,
which I'd make shift
until you reached the fault line;
there, where mattress and headboard met,
your cleverish parts
and wisp of a voice
startled
even unflappable me,
with your very first quatrain:
"You're the best cook ever
- ooh, you feel soft and cool.
Oh, and you're Snack Mom today
for my whole preschool."
I didn't mind, really,
since you were only knee-high
to a sonnet then.
I kissed you
with a mother's forgiveness,
baked cookies from scratch
before I dashed you both off.
But it's mid-afternoon now,
and your voice has changed,
gotten stronger.
Adolescent buds have filled out
on their own,
swelled to twelve firm stanzas
with verve.
And nerve,
with no regard
for my unwinding time
in here, where the crackles
and creaks of baseboard heat
were my only companions until
you barged in
all grown up,
all puffed up
with certainty you'll win
the Pushcart Prize
in poetry this year.
I try to pin you to the bath mat
with my emergency technique:
pink lipstick from Clinique.
But I'm too slow on the draw
to capture your drama
and depth.

CHICKEN SOUP

"Homemade's best, cures all sorts of maladies,"
my Sicilian grandmother swears.
"Sure," I say, "but who's got time?"
So, to clear the chest and sinuses, at least,
I reach out to Andy Warhol's broth of choice
in bright pop-icon cans.
Yesterday, in fact, I UPS'd a dozen
to my daughter
who's down with bronchitis,
eighty miles away at art school
on the cusp of New York City's
bad-boy neighborhood, "Bed-Sty."
That's why I'm on the phone with my daughter now.
She confirms receipt of the care package,
and assures me her chest feels much less congested already.
"Overnight?" I ask.
She swears it
but promises to heat and eat the soup anyway,
except for one can
that she stashed away, unopened:
a secret bludgeon
in her everyday handbag outfitted
with subway tokens, make-up and a hand-held
atomizer of Mace.
"Feel better," I say. "And please,
travel in throngs."
To which she replies, "Uh-huh."
Then, like swimmers in sync,
we say our good-byes;
she hangs up first.
I return my portable phone to its distant cradle,
then visit my grandmother.
Here in her kitchen, I'm glad
she serves me a bowl of fresh chicken soup
at the oak
gate-leg table where
we share secrets mostly,
hold hands now and again.
I ask if she can remember
more old family recipes
that will help a long-distance mother
breathe easier.

SATURDAY NIGHT RITUAL

She coaxes the FM tuner across frequencies
to finesse her ex-husband's voice,
saxony soft over the airwaves,
back to her pillow.
Memories surge
from the quilt of their past.
His college yearbook,
balanced on its spine,
splits open
to his photo caption
with lines about promise
and charm.
Especially charm.
Once, in the Student Union, he sprinkled
salt packets on her teased hair, then
hand in hand they flew
across Formica lagoons.
Again and again, she squints at his caption,
the way she does when reading
the fine print in new car ads,
but still finds no disclaimers.
You would say he sold her
on himself without divulging
"pictures are for illustration only
and may not depict the actual item."
The recent snapshot, there, of their child
is deceiving, too.
You see only a toddler,
his hands covered with ice cream and cake.
But if you could clean away
all the sweetness,
you'd discover
fork marks:
remnants of his father's belief
parental permission was a gift
that should have been opened first.
When she thinks of that day,
she starts to shiver --
uncontrollably, now.
She latches the windows,
latches on to the quilt,
and vows
to keep her ex's coldness
where she keeps bleach:
out of the reach of children.
A young birthday boy
vroom-vrooming
his new Hot Wheels
across his mother's bare toes, keeps her
fearless.

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