Sad, Lonely Poem with Slices of Turkey by Terri Linn Davis
I ask him to help me
pick out hairstyles,
and show him pictures
I’ve saved of better
looking women.
When he observes
my face directly
for the first time in,
maybe, weeks, he says,
“sometimes the right answer
is to do nothing.” After
it’s done, I call him
on my way home—I go
from heart’s length
to jaw bone. He tells me,
only when it’s too late,
that he liked my hair
how it is.
I say, “some people cry
after a bad haircut.”
He says, “really?” and then
reminds me that sometimes
the right answer
is to do nothing.
On my way home
I pick up a cake
for his father’s birthday.
When I open the door,
I wonder if he might
notice I’m home
only when he hears
the door is closing.
He says nothing
when his father tells him
I’m wonderful. Later,
When I’m cold, he asks me
to get dressed. He doesn’t
acknowledge that I’m naked.
He falls asleep with
headphones on every night
in a different room
listening to a woman
On a video turning pages
and whispering about cranial
nerves as she snaps softly.
He would take my hand
if I held it to him
as dutifully as he packs
the kids’ sandwiches
in the morning. He would hold
my fingers like slices of turkey.
Never putting them to his teeth,
never hungry for what’s in front of him
Terri Linn Davis is an American poet and writer. She is the co-founder, co-editor, and the Xena: Warrior Princess of “Spin the Bottle,” for Icebreakers Lit. She is also the host of the sporadic podcast Too Lit To Quit: the Podcast for Literary Writers.
Terri is a first generation college student, and after working various odd jobs throughout her twenties, she graduated with her B.S. in English in 2018 and then with an MFA in Poetry from Southern Connecticut State University in 2021.
Her poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Sundress Publications’ Best of The Net. Some of her poems, fiction, craft talks, and poetry book reviews appear in Pithead Chapel, Taco Bell Quarterly, The Penn Review, Rejection Letters, Cultural Daily, The Daily Drunk Mag, Bending Genres, Five South, and elsewhere.
She is an alumna of the 2022 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop for poetry and a 2023 Artist Fellowship recipient from Connecticut Office of the Arts.
Terri works from home as a Technical Writer in an 190 year old haunted farmhouse in Connecticut. She is also licensed to teach English to grades 7-12. She is a sometimes-adjunct, teaching writing composition and poetry for her alma mater.
Terri has both Dyscalculia and ADHD, so she would greatly appreciate you never ever ask her to tell time on an analog clock and to also please forgive her in advance for her long bouts of absences. If it helps, you can also blame her three children.
If she becomes too lost, you can find her on twitter @TerriLinnDavis
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