February 6, 2025: "Poem to My First Lover," Firsts, "My Mother Contemplates the Integrated Circuit"

Obviously, there are firsts for everything:  first child, first job, first tooth, first convicted felon to be elected President of the United States.  (That would be a hint for any MAGA Republican to stop reading this post.)  Firsts can be fun and exciting, or painful and terrifying.  

Sharon Olds writes about a first in her life . . .

Poem to My First Lover

by: Sharon Olds

Now that I understand, I like to
think of your terror—handed a girl
mad with love, her long, fresh
raw body thin as a pared
soap, breasts round and high and
opalescent as bubbles of soap,
laid across your legs, 18,
untouched. I like to understand your
terror, now, the way you took her,
deflowering her as you’d gut a fish,
leaving in the morning with talk of a wife.
          Now that I
know about the fear of love
I like to think of her white-hot body
greenish as a fish just landed, quivering and
slapping on a rock--fallen into your
lap, man, shuddering like your cock,
a woman crazed with love, hot off the
press, sharp as a tool never used,
blazing across your thighs and all you could
do in your fear was firk out her cherry like an
escargot from its dark shell and then
toss her away. I am in awe of terror that will
waste so much, I am in love with the girl who went
offering, came to you and
laid it out like a feast on a platter, the
delicate flesh—yes, yes,
I accept the gift.

If you think I'm going to write about my first lover in this post, you're going to be disappointed.  Not that I'm against writing about such topics.  Far from it.  However, that's not what's on my mind tonight.

What is on my mind tonight, you ask?

A lot of things--from the Republican dismantling of democracy in the United States to my next book of poems, which I'm currently revising.  I've lived through a lot of big things in my lifetime, from the Challenger explosion to the ending of apartheid in South Africa.  Thanks to COVID, I can add a global pandemic to that list.  

Now, I live a privileged life because I'm white and have a penis.  Personally, I don't have to worry about racism or antisemitism or sexism.  Basically, I won the lottery for living in the United States.  That doesn't mean I support racist, anti-Semitic, or sexist ideology.  The only thing I actually hate is hatred.  (And Adam Sandler films.)

Yet, here I sit in my house in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the United States, watching racist, anti-Semitic, sexist Republicans destroy my country.  I guess that's a first for me.  I've never witnessed a coup up close and personal, and it's terrifying.

Plus, I'm ashamed to be a white man in present-day America.  I don't want to live in a country run solely by old Caucasians with limp dicks who think the world owes them something.  The strongest influences in my life have all been women.  I grew up with five sisters.  My mentor in college was a woman from Louisiana.  Most of my closest friends are women.  I have benefitted greatly from my relationships with all of these strong, smart, independent females in my life.

So, on behalf of my gender and race, I apologize to all of the women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ friends and family, Muslims, and Native Americans in my life.  You are important to me, and YOU are what makes America great.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about one of the most important women in his life tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1959, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit.  In honor of all things microchipped, write a poem in the voice of a stereotypical 1950s American housewife as she puzzles over circuit diagrams and contemplates possible uses for this new invention.

My Mother Contemplates

the Integrated Circuit

by:  Martin Achatz

October 1953

She studies the diagram the way

she studied my father's body

on their wedding night, all his

curves and lines and muscles

and promise, a fleshy scrying orb

playing some home movie not yet

made, her surrounded by kids

on a beach, all of them slick

as baby seals, pulling her toward

the waves and sand.  Perhaps

she understands the schemata, 

how it's a map to microwaves,

television, Sputnik, Apollo 11.

Maybe she glimpses a future

where I'm sitting with my notebook

and pen, writing this poem

about her strapped into

the seat beside Armstrong,

countdown commencing,

engines igniting, rocket

rising, rising, rising, rising

through troposphere, stratosphere,

meso-, thermo-, exosphere,

launching herself to the distant

bright moon of me.

April 15: White, Classic Saint Marty, "Spring Snow Storm"

It has been a very long day of a lot of snow.  When I say a lot, I mean so much snow that the whole friggin' world is just . . . white.  The ground, trees, houses.  Even the air is white, filled with little bits of white driven sideways by a white wind.  Just a little while ago, my car was stuck in white.  My muscles are aching white, and there's a white weariness sitting on my shoulders.

I have spent the afternoon shoveling, grading, planning lessons, and waiting for my plow guy to make an appearance.  He just finished up, pushing the two-foot drifts of white into some kind of organization in my front yard.  He looked exhausted, said he'd been plowing since about seven o'clock this morning.  And it ain't over yet for him.  He's got another day of white to organize.

All the schools in the area have already closed for tomorrow, except the university where I teach.  That will probably happen tomorrow morning at about 6 a.m.  That means there are a lot of kids, including my own, who are going to stay up late tonight, enjoying an unexpected three-day weekend. 

Me?  I'm stressing about my drive tomorrow morning to the outpatient surgery center where I earn my medical insurance.  It's twenty miles of the worst stretch of winter highway in the Upper Peninsula, besides M-28, which runs to Munising along Lake Superior.  The road commission frequently closes M-28 during weather like this.  Not sure if it's closed right now, although it wouldn't surprise me.  My plow guy told me that the U.S. 41 stretch I have to drive tomorrow morning was 15 miles of whiteout.  So . . . that didn't help my anxiety.

It seems like April 15 is a day that causes me stress regularly.  Three years ago, I was having anxiety of a different kind . . .

April 15, 2015:  Like Drowning, My Dad, Incredible Guilt

Ives and Annie slept, entangled in each other's arms, their daughter sleeping alone.  Ives wold get up a half-dozen times a night to make sure that she was resting.  And every so often he would push the door open, intending to turn the radio off, but would find himself standing silently over her, his heart breaking whenever he would think about how much Robert's death must have pained her.  And he would sometimes move closer, and, brushing aside the hair that fell over her brow, plant a tender kiss on her forehead.  He would hear her sigh . . . You know what it was like?  It was like drowning.

This paragraph comes shortly after Ives' son, Robert, is murdered.  It's always a difficult passage for me to read because it's full of so much pain.  I have done what Ives is doing:  standing by my daughter's bed, watching her sleep.  It's that parental impulse of wanting to protect your child from any harm, any heartbreak.  And not being able to.


My dad visits my sister every day in the nursing home.  He drives there for lunch and stays several hours.  It's really all he can do to help her.  He doesn't understand medicine or surgery or treatment.  In fact, I would say that he has a severe distrust of doctors and nurses and the medical establishment.  Understandably.  The healthcare system for which my sister worked fired her for getting a prolonged sickness.  The doctors have really done nothing to help her.  Now, she's looking at a long-term stay in a nursing home.

My dad comes from the same generation as Ives.  Hardworking.  Devout.  Protective.  My sister's situation is tearing him apart.  He knows she can't come home in her current state, but he doesn't want to see her flat on her back in a hospital bed all day, every day, either.  As a father, it's a terrible position to be in.

I have incredible guilt at the moment.  I feel like I should be doing more to help my sister, and, yet, I have to work and teach.  My family depends on my paychecks for survival.  I don't have a whole lot of freedom in my life.  I want to be her advocate, hound the lawyer and social worker and doctors.  Yet, I can't do it all on my lunch break or after work.

It feels like all I can do is be like Ives:  stand by my sister's bed, watch her sleep, pray.

Saint Marty feels like he's drowning a little bit tonight, too.

Don't know how long I can hold my breath

The winter storm warning for my little corner of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan has just been extended until 8 p.m. tomorrow night, with the possibility of an additional 10 to 12 more inches of snow. 

Saint Marty is getting really tired of winter.

Spring Snow Storm

by:  Martin Achatz

The weather guy, in his ugly tie,

Predicts six to twelve inches tonight,

A spring storm out of Alaska, Canada,

Winds as strong as cattle trains.

Tomorrow, I will wake to this creature,

This force of different fronts from ocean,

Mountain, glacier, tundra.  I’ve heard

It said a butterfly’s wings, trembled

On African savannah, causes hurricanes

On the Gulf Coast, another flood

In the Big Easy, wipes out Mardi Gras

For good, an oil slick of jazz

On magnolia, pelican wing, bayou.

I wonder if the collective gasp in Japan

After earthquake and tsunami caused

This early spring snow, set into motion

Winds across the Pacific, bore

That shock and grief through salt,

Through supermoon, mixed it with cries

Of caribou and polar bear, brought

It to me, to my home, snow falling

On roof and car, snow on street, lawn,

Gas station, church steeple, snow

Everywhere, heavy as a thousand souls.

Tonight, when I press my lips to my son’s

Fingers, somewhere on this planet

Rain will start to fall in a desert place,

Filling the land with green life.