Cathleen Calbert

The Problem with Nature


When the weather doesn’t match
what you want to do—

say, sip hot chocolate
because you feel like it, okay, because
it’s the end of the day and you need
some comfort food for a change,
you’re in the mood for thick sweaters,
the clean beginnings of fall or the inside of winter,
but it’s blooming like bloody mad outside,
it’s sunny as all get out, full
of crocuses, daffodils, whippoorwills,
and you’re just one lone pale freak,

or you’re set for sun, tough to imagine,
but it could be picnic, could be basking,
maybe something sexy, maybe
smearing cocoa butter over your body
and someone else’s, then slipping
cherrystones and littlenecks
into each other’s mouths
on a terracotta terrace
in your best halter dress
that just doesn’t work with a wrap,
when a scolding rain forces you
inside a cold car, where the only possibility
is a furious exchange of words
or tongues,

or you’ve finally gone sublime
inside your body and are ready
to shout something crazy—
Melancholy’s Sweet, Truth’s Beauty—
but the mountains are smaller than in pictures,
not ice-tipped monuments of grandeur,
not Mont Blanc, not even little Yawgoo—

it’s a drag then, isn’t it?
It’s as if Nature doesn’t give a shit
about what you want, as if
you don’t even matter.


first published in The Cimarron Review

Dream Teaching


Wake with a jolt into guilt.
White-rabbit run across campus.

Wrong building.
No one knows anything.

Thumb the bulletin.
Class at ten. It’s eleven.

If and when
You burst in,

A circle of kids listens
To the cheerful clink

Of each silver word
Falling from your lips.

Something’s wrong.
Walls drop away, doors open.

You’re lost in the quad.
You can’t make them stay.

Slap of books,
Zip of backpacks.

They’re merging
Into a student body.

Hey, you’re still speaking!
But who are you teaching?

They smile at each another.
They are going to Burger King.

They are going to have sex.
Your silver words are drops of sweat.


first published in The Wisconsin Review

The Closet

In a hidden closet, an itty-bitty fairground is overrun with zombie mice. Overcome, perhaps, is a better word since undead rodents move far more slowly than their living kin. With x’s for eyes and unbelievably small nails curling upwards, the zombie mice stagger through the tiny arcade. They climb into the buckets of the Ferris wheel and even hazard the tilt-a-whirl as well as the roller coaster, though several drop like duds from that quick, jerky ride. All in all, they have a good time. True, there’s no human flesh to devour or cats to surprise, but they have their whole undead lives ahead of them, and their need for entertainment has greatly grown since their hearts clattered in their chests at the first sniff of cheese. Now they are helpless thrill-seekers, and find the truism true: kicks keep gettin’ harder to find.

first published in The Prose Poem Project