"Condiments And Other Poems" by Mara Batt
I'm very nearly the woman muttering
under her breath in the condiment aisle.
“Relish, relish, relish—mustard. Fuck.
Fucking relish. Fucking Richard.”
I keep my eyes on the ketchup
and act conveniently deaf so that when
she notices me standing there
I don't make it worse.
I'm sure Richard's a dick
and relish is so deeply difficult
that it's spilling out into the aisle,
chopped and pickled, scenting the air.
I take a whiff to remind myself
the thing that keeps crazy inside
is so plastic-shopping-bag-thin.
"Backyard Jazz" by Mara Batt
I don't quite trust my memory,
as certain times swell and merge with others,
but I imagine there must've been wind chimes
tinkling in the summer night
beneath jazz that floated up from the cellar.
I wasn't yet in the full phase of chubby
that came before puberty stretched me out
when I tumbled down the cellar stairs
and had to yell louder than I felt
for anyone to hear over the music
and laughter of adults with cocktails.
They all wore hats like maybe leprechauns and captains
and howled to their collective absurdity,
feeling young in the mild heat.
I cried still too quietly
and wished I was better at making a scene.
And then I thought, defeated,
if the fall didn't inspire screams naturally,
maybe it wasn't worth a care at all.
Either an elbow or a knee was bloody,
and I can picture my mother wryly offering to rinse it
with a bottle of gin
and how people might've chuckled uncomfortably
as they recalled their own kids at home.
If it all really happened like that,
I held my scraped appendage out to the bottle,
eager to harmonize with trombones and bulb-string lights
and the rim salt sticking to my bare, calloused feet.
Mara Batt is a senior English Major at Ithaca College. When she isn't bogged down with school work, she enjoys playing volleyball with her roommates, gardening, and reading. Her favorite genres are thriller, young-adult, and science fiction. Her future career interests include graduate school for literature, creative writing, or teaching.