Poem of the Week | March 14, 2022

“Pockabook” by L.J. Sysko
This week’s Poem of the Week is “Pockabook” by L.J. Sysko!
L.J. Sysko’s work has appeared / is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Ploughshares, Limp Wrist, SWWIM Every Day, Degenerate Art, Moist, Radar, BEST NEW POETS, and her poetry chapbook: BATTLEDORE (Finishing Line Press, 2017). A 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Thomas Lux Scholar, Sysko has been honored with both Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Delaware Division of the Arts Fellowships; her poetry has earned finalist recognition from Copper Nickel’s Jake Adam York Prize, Marsh Hawk Press, The Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, and The Pinch, among others. She can be found online at ljsysko.com.
Pockabook
We made 2nd base out of
oak tree catkins.
  Mound of tumbleweed
  centered.
We made witch’s brew out of
a hollow stump.
  Cauldron of acorns
  stirred with twigs.
We made microphones out of
Goody hairbrushes.
  Paddles of glittered plastic
  and shed hair.
We made pockabooks out of
mom’s pockabook.
  Pouch of Binaca
  and Jackie O sunglasses.
We made cigarettes out of
candy cigarettes.
  Tuiles of cellulose
  and powdered tapioca.
We made adultness out of
pretense.
  We made it up until
  we believed it. We made
them buy it. We made work fun and
fun work and
  life work and work
  life and work work—
carrying our stirring twigs
like medieval torches,
  brandishing hairbrush microphones
  like ambitious witches, gripping candy cigarettes
like grown women, clutching dusk
like its acquiescence to night was our skilled negotiation—.
  Red rover, red rover,
  send her over—
to swim in an estuary
the size of
  our street corner.
  Fish swimming
like loose Velamints—
aspartame-speckled
  in the muddy shoals
  of mom’s pockabook—
on its banks, shadows played
our game.
  Feints and steals formed a ceremony
  made up of sisters
and pretense
that time made
  real.
Author’s Note
I’ve been jogging my poems down the thematic cul-de-sac of loss, cutting across nostalgia’s backyard — headed instead for transformation and, farther: toward paean. We don’t always arrive (paean doesn’t answer her doorbell every time), but the quest’s been fruitful anyway. My mom quit smoking when I was five and though I don’t remember her smoking, I do recall the nicotine substitutes she stocked and toted. The mints swam deep inside my mom’s purse. I might not have located paean down there in the wreck, but transformations — semblances and stand-ins — abounded. If you pronounced the word “pockabook” like we did, well, then you know… we’ve got something like joy on our hands.
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