Between the Honeymoon and Death

We only printed our wedding pictures

Last month.

On our one month anniversary

We saw our kitchen cabinets

As the before picture

In an advertisement.

I hear cockroaches

In our Married-Student-Housing

Apartment ceiling.

They chirp to each other

Mocking my cooking

But they still eat

The instant rice from

Our Waterford Crystal

Wedding Heirloom.

When I’m alone I watch

Re-runs of the show my mom

Loved when I was a kid:

A sixty-year old man

In a healthy sexual relationship

With an eighteen-year old,

And a ninety-year-old woman

Who dances on her own grave.

The last time I checked,

Jack-o-lanterns do not age well

But caterpillars do

So I’ll slink around in fuzzy green

Slippers that sweep the floor as I walk.

Before we got married

His seventy-seven year old

Grandma Inga, who always

Smells like cinnamon, told me

With a heavy Finnish accent

            You have a new home now, you know,

            You can’t be always with your mom now

When I was a child

My mother didn’t let us

Carve our pumpkins

Until after Thanksgiving.

One year we stuck cucumbers

In a jar with vinegar and dill

After nine weeks they birthed pickles.

Now I have fine lines and

I still have acne.

I hear Bruhas chanting,

((With background chanters, honeyed voices))

           

  Take this  

          Stay Young  

                        ((Rejuvenate))

                        ((Replenish))

            Goodbye Wrinkles    Goodbye Sun

            Rub your face in Bubblegum ((Scented!))

            Release Bubbles

            Eternal Youth Tamed, Bottled, and Sealed

            ((Oo-Ah-Ah-Ah 

Oo-Ah-Ah))

But I don’t even like Forever 21’s clothing.

Was Mrs. Robinson

Clinging to Benjamin Braddock’s youth

Or enjoying her own maturity?

(Childhood Memory)

AUNT             It needs something to shock it alive these days

MOM             Not really

AUNT             Everything sags now

MOM             I don’t know, it’s better than before… the umph’s been redistributed, and

Young wines have too much tannin for my taste anyways.

Weekly Inga-ism:

I need to feed the cat some turkey

So that he will get off the table.

One summer, I babysat

A professor’s cat,

Who was so old,

He was more like a Muppet

Than a cat,

He coughed when he meowed.

She said if Whiskers dies

Put him in the freezer.

When I die,

Don’t put me in the freezer.

We hit a meat sale at Hy-Vee

To stock our freezer.

They put stickers on the beef

“Color is not a good indication of freshness.”

The old men

Who live near the Viagra factory

Report feeling virile.

My mother told me the secret ingredient

In her strawberry cake recipe—

Feeling the right amount of cinnamon,

Based on the juiciness of the strawberries.

Adjust bake time relatively.

Still, my cakes aren’t as moist as hers.

We’ll replace our kitchen cabinets someday.