Victoria Norlund
Advance to Boardwalk
Commentary
Victoria on "Advance to Boardwalk":
“Advanced to Boardwalk” emerged from a prompt: Write a poem using these words: summer, red, Grandma, chair. I rarely use prompts…and I rarely write about preteen me, but this photographic scene that expressed the relationship I had with my grandmother poured out.
I wanted the form to echo playing a board game on a lazy hot summer day–back when a day and a game and June and July and August stretched out endlessly before me.
My poems usually deconstruct and construct realities, blend the past and present, and try to make sense of a world that often defies logic. I wanted to follow the rules of that memory and explore my relationship not only to my grandmother but also to a self that has long since passed. It is interesting to visit a self that no longer fits– to analyze a routine that is no longer a routine, a comfortable moment that has become a comfort.
It’s funny how this mundane moment became a core memory – and how my present self felt the need to peel back the ordinary to discover a profound connection between two humans in different stages of their game.
I so wish I could break out the Monopoly board and chat with my Grandma again. Tell her how lucky I was to have this strong sage of a woman under the roof of my childhood who loved me so much she would give me the shirt off her back and Baltic for Park Place. But you can only go forward and you can’t change the rules to this game.
I didn’t realize when I wrote the last line of this poem that the red pitcher fit perfectly with the monopoly metaphor–it had become a totem, and a tangible reminder now housed in a box somewhere in a corner of my memory.
“Advanced to Boardwalk” emerged from a prompt: Write a poem using these words: summer, red, Grandma, chair. I rarely use prompts…and I rarely write about preteen me, but this photographic scene that expressed the relationship I had with my grandmother poured out.
I wanted the form to echo playing a board game on a lazy hot summer day–back when a day and a game and June and July and August stretched out endlessly before me.
My poems usually deconstruct and construct realities, blend the past and present, and try to make sense of a world that often defies logic. I wanted to follow the rules of that memory and explore my relationship not only to my grandmother but also to a self that has long since passed. It is interesting to visit a self that no longer fits– to analyze a routine that is no longer a routine, a comfortable moment that has become a comfort.
It’s funny how this mundane moment became a core memory – and how my present self felt the need to peel back the ordinary to discover a profound connection between two humans in different stages of their game.
I so wish I could break out the Monopoly board and chat with my Grandma again. Tell her how lucky I was to have this strong sage of a woman under the roof of my childhood who loved me so much she would give me the shirt off her back and Baltic for Park Place. But you can only go forward and you can’t change the rules to this game.
I didn’t realize when I wrote the last line of this poem that the red pitcher fit perfectly with the monopoly metaphor–it had become a totem, and a tangible reminder now housed in a box somewhere in a corner of my memory.
Biography
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Victoria Nordlund's poetry collection Wine-Dark Sea was published by Main Street Rag in 2020. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee, whose work has appeared in PANK Magazine, Rust+Moth, Chestnut Review, Pidgeonholes, and elsewhere. Visit her at VictoriaNordlund.com
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