Nicole Steinberg
The Driver
A new nightly ritual after the needles are done:
L nude in the bedroom, rubbing oil into her belly
to stave off the webbed handprints of stretch marks.
The dog strains past the mattress' edge to lick
her fingers. The morning will be starchy, difficult to see
through its haze, and my humorless driving instructor
will try to undo nagging baby fat traumas of my past,
remind me for the fourteenth time that I'll fail the test
if I forget to signal. I'm way too young to be a mom,
I keep joking, a joke on the brink of extinction.
A threshold awaits, prelude to a time of basement parties
I'll never attend nor be invited to; of playlists hastily curated
as desperate altars to my awkward and thrilling youth;
of annual breast exams—not the type of attention
they received at 24 or 29, clumsy and climbing
into a lap in the driver's seat—but a clinical audit
that will bring me back to 12 or 14, tenderized
by the dressing room attendant's unkind eyes
as she struggled to pull a polyester bra's beige
embrace round my flesh until it clasped. You learn
to drive young if you want to escape. Well, I did and
I didn't. Even now, when I step on the gas, it's terrifying.
I have my own nightly practice, which is to consider
all the ways one might lose a child: in utero; in the void
of a labor and delivery unit, taunted by sounds of nurses
shuffling their rubber-soled shoes along linoleum,
husbands fetching fresh buckets of ice as the world somehow
manages to maintain and even continue itself, absurdly;
or in a vast and chilly department store, a squealing ghost
suddenly vanished amongst towering, minacious mannequins.
Like my mother always said, you worry until you die,
a work colleague tells me cheerfully, more than once.
The day my child is born, I will eat eggs and bacon
in the hospital cafeteria, next to a noisy waterfall feature
while L experiences a new working definition of pain
with every passing hour. Our soft-spoken doula
will remind me to hydrate, will take documentary
photos of our emotional trauma with her iPhone.
Sparrows will mistake torn ketchup packets for crumbs.
I will ask my dead mother for clarity and strength, tell her
that I miss her, that I'm so damn tired of missing her.
Will she hear me over the churn of chlorinated water?
Like any child without a parent, I've learned
several ways to interpret an answering silence.
This will not be the first final day
of a waking life I still recognize.
lambs
what's it like to
touch a tangerine
for the first time?
sunday afternoon
we visit henry
and hyacinth
born thursday
two fleecy commas
pristine curlicues
bellies pressed
to coarse hay
inside a steel
bin their
freshness
on display
sela flaps
her milkfed wing
in recognition
they are kin
tickled and sweet
a jammy iamb
strangers can't help
but smile back
I am compiling
so many questions
I'll never ask
about what it's like
to be porous
to wear a heart
with compartments
for simple treasures
drawstrings
business cards
coasters
to be grass tender
a wandering
chive blossom
constantly delighted
realizing you are
so darn alive
Nicole Steinberg's most recent chapbook is dear Elsie / seltzer, out now from Bloof Books. She is also the author of full-length collections Glass Actress (Furniture Press Books, 2017) and Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013), and several chapbooks, including Fat Dreams (Barrelhouse, 2018) and Clever Little Gang, winner of the 4X4 Furniture Press Chapbook Award (2014). She is also the editor of an anthology, Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011). Her work has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, Newsweek, Flavorwire, Bitch, and Hyperallergic. In 2021, she was honored to be named Poet Laureate of Bucks County, PA, where she lives with her family. She can be found online at nicolesteinberg.net.