Julie Dickson ---- three poems

You Are the Author

If life is yet to be written

does it mean that

you are the author?

Can it be composed

on a blank slate, such that

no pain occurs?

Then I choose for my story

to be wonderful –

full of joyful times.

No? It’s not happening?

Resigned, then I will write

the realistic life I lead.

My trials are personal –

you don’t share my life

or my pain – it’s mine alone.

You may have a different pain

and in the story of your life,

you are the author.

Julie A. Dickson

Exeter, NH

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Her Mark

I couldn’t drink coffee for years.

The aroma of coffee co-mingled

and conjured the memory of smoke,

her cigarette leaning precariously

on the edge of a blue blown-glass ashtray.

I stared at the glowing tip, waiting

for it to fall, to mar her highly polished table

but no…instinct drove her hand forward

to pluck it up, butt burnt close to the filter.

I watched it go to her lips, bright red –

lipstick left on the filter end,

quickly snuffed out.

My eyes darted to the coffee cup,

half-full of tepid, milky liquid and

Suddenly I realized the rim bore

her mark as well.

As if corrected with a teacher’s red pencil,

I couldn’t bring myself to drink coffee then.

Even now, I can still smell her cigarette.

Julie A. Dickson

Exeter, NH

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Night Out

It wasn’t at all comfortable

sitting atop an old crib mattress

my father had jammed into the back seat.

Too high we sat, heads brushing the ceiling,

my brother stretched out, purposely

pushing his feet into my legs.

The sound emitted from a scratchy speaker;

it hung awkwardly on my father’s car door,

tinny music too loud, dialog too soft.

We had to share popcorn, my brother’s hand

plunging into the box, butter smeared his face.

I ate daintily, despising my greasy fingers.

Two films were shown, after a cartoon short.

That Darn Cat first, we peered over the front seat,

shoulder-to-shoulder, my brother shoving me.

My parents demanded silence and we obeyed,

only the close proximity betrayed our conflict.

Intermission sent a stream of us from cars

Into public restrooms, our sneaker soles tacky

on sticky tiled floors – then running back to cars.

“Take off your shoes”, my mother chided.

Wide awake, we were impossibly required

to settle down as the adult feature began.

We wrestled in twisted blankets, head to toe

on the mattress, straining to see, trying to

follow the movie plot only by the sound track,

slowly relaxing, we gave in to sleep.

I never heard the ending, didn’t feel my father

ease the car out of the crowded drive-in lot,

the ride home, never woke when my mother

carried me in her arms from the car to my bed.

Julie A. Dickson

Exeter, NH

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