Jennifer Battisti
Paraphernalia
When I was fifteen, it was the little metal grate
unhinged from each faucet until my father cursed,
Barbasol dripping from his angry jaw,
at the surge I’d created.
Soon, Bic pens were emptied
of their circulatory systems.
Naked ink and ball-point were laid out
like cadavers without the shell to house the words.
There was relief in the loyalty of chemistry
table-salt swirled in the lightbulb
dissolving fluorescence until alchemy
cleared a space for a small white stone to burn
and billow the 40 watts that was once alive to illuminate
measured bleach on weekends.
There was redemption in the now lonely socket
in the laundry room where my mother would stare— tsk, tsk
at another way she’d been ripped off.
She’d question the discrepancies, blackouts;
as if our home was the Hocus Focus cartoon
in the Funny section of the Sunday paper.
And then the house began to betray us on its own,
as if I’d crystalized a permission. Carpets plumped
without a known water source, the mailbox shook
with unnamed subscriptions to Popular Mechanics magazine.
The wallpaper unspooled, exposing patterns once hushed under
adhesive’s authority, while I played aluminum foil origami;
poked holes with mother’s sewing needle
into the toilet-paper-roll pipe I’d made--
the prize for ingenuity not fit for the science fair I missed that year.
unhinged from each faucet until my father cursed,
Barbasol dripping from his angry jaw,
at the surge I’d created.
Soon, Bic pens were emptied
of their circulatory systems.
Naked ink and ball-point were laid out
like cadavers without the shell to house the words.
There was relief in the loyalty of chemistry
table-salt swirled in the lightbulb
dissolving fluorescence until alchemy
cleared a space for a small white stone to burn
and billow the 40 watts that was once alive to illuminate
measured bleach on weekends.
There was redemption in the now lonely socket
in the laundry room where my mother would stare— tsk, tsk
at another way she’d been ripped off.
She’d question the discrepancies, blackouts;
as if our home was the Hocus Focus cartoon
in the Funny section of the Sunday paper.
And then the house began to betray us on its own,
as if I’d crystalized a permission. Carpets plumped
without a known water source, the mailbox shook
with unnamed subscriptions to Popular Mechanics magazine.
The wallpaper unspooled, exposing patterns once hushed under
adhesive’s authority, while I played aluminum foil origami;
poked holes with mother’s sewing needle
into the toilet-paper-roll pipe I’d made--
the prize for ingenuity not fit for the science fair I missed that year.
Biography
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Jennifer Battisti, a Las Vegas native, is the co-director and a participating Teaching Artist for the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project in Clark County. She was voted best local poet or writer by the readers of the Desert Companion. Her chapbook Echo Bay was released in 2018 (Tolsun Books).
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