Barbara Worton

Barbara Worton is the author of Bedtime Stories: The Short, Long and Tall Tales of a Sleepwriter and Too Tall Alice. She co-authored If I’m Talking, Why Aren’t You Listening? and The Adventures of The Baker’s Daughter. Her writing has also appeared in literary journals and women’s service and business publications.

Deeper Pockets (Poem)

My left pocket is deep, very deep, and I reach and grab and I can’t get to the bottom. I try again, put my hand in, stretch down so far that as I walk down the street, I list to one side, almost tripping over my feet, and again, I come up with lint and dust balls and last year’s taxi receipts. I come up short. It’s a good thing I’m not a kangaroo. I was raised to never put anything in my pockets. Ladies don’t do that. Ladies who stuff wallets, gloves, tissues, eyeglasses and small, but deadly, firearms in their pockets get unsightly bulges in all the wrong places, and there is nothing worse than a watermelon-sized lump on your butt or thighs. Now there’s a hole in my never-stuffed pocket. Probably because I put my keys in there once. Only once, I’m not lying, and now I can’t even sew up this hole. It’s not on the seam. It’s a puncture wound, and the place where my index finger wants to go. I poke and prod, a mindless moving meditation, and the hole grows and grows, pulls and shreds. But there’s one good thing. If I put bread crumbs or jelly beans in my pocket and then walk and walk and walk, I’ll always be able to find my way home.

Shower Ping-Pong (Poem)

At a certain age, a G-string causes pain.

What can I do with knowledge gained on a day when birds walk and lambs fly

and the cow never jumps over the moon?

I’m tired of waiting for the right time,

for the moon to be in the right house, the laundry to be in final spin,

for the road to be wide open and the train on time.

If promises were bubbles, how high would they fly?

Were we really stereotypes?

I have to believe I’m enough.

I do not want “go to the dump” as the newest item on my to-do list.

I worry at the stop light.

I wish I could forget the flute player.

Meanies everywhere.

I want to hear bells ring and voices carry,

and I want peace on earth in my lifetime.

Why does fresh cement smell like raw potatoes?

I need to pack: estrogen and zit-cream in my suitcase.

What do the Seven Dwarfs know that I don’t?

Five cows rang my doorbell last night.

Eight rubber duckies sit at the foot of my bathtub.

I poke my belly, just to make sure there’s nothing growing,

nothing in the wrong place.

For the first time I think, I’m really crazy.

The wind was hungry the day the sun came out.

Under my bed, there’s a ladder, folded flat.

Are you ready now, when I least expect it, to tap me on a shoulder?

To stop a bus speeding my way?

Maybe I should write an overly generous check. It’s a good cause.

I’m stumbling in the dark.

The moon seems unable to spin on its axis.

Come on. I need to talk to you.