Kelly R. Samuels


Lines and Phrases

Walking the dog, I hear the boy in the neighbor’s pool

call to another boy, I’m going to beat you like a Cherokee 

drum.

 

There’s an open palm on the water’s surface followed 

by spray and a scream as if one is being killed by another. 

 

Their dog sees mine and begins to bark and the mother turns 

from where she sits to look me in the eye. 

 

Later, I learn the line is from a movie I’ll pass on—as in to skip,

not as in to give an object to or repeat, as I do those phrases

that sometimes rise to the surface, inherited:

I don’t give a rat’s ass and Too bad, so sad.

 

My grandmother’s stated lack of empathy, carried forward 

from her to her to me, though she knew well how to wash a cut

and bandage. 

Would kneel and ask if everything was better 

while my mother stood, claiming I cried at the drop of a hat. 

 

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. 

 

We begin to babble around six months, form recognizable words

around the first year. We listen and model. Listen and model. 

 

He’d totter about, naming chair, cup, light. She’d stretch out 

her arms after a long day with me, say UpDa. 

 

You talking to me?

 

Someone said we eventually turn into our mothers. We catch

ourselves with their words in our mouth. 

 

Once, I was told to use my words—this in the months after 

my mother died. My stomping about solved nothing, got me nowhere. 

 

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate, he drawled. 

That one I knew. 

 

Even later, the pool is still. 

 

Now this line tossed off. Now this one. 

 

Pain: Every 4 to 6 Hrs.

It could be that this is not what is found

written on the bottle but, rather, what I

have grown accustomed to: a state of. 

As organized as I am, the regularity of

the pain is plausible. I check the weather

at 7, at noon, at 7. I replace my water

pitcher’s filter on the first of every month

every three months. I go to the dentist

every six. So, every four to six seems right. 

What was it, diabetic as she was, she did 

when she must? And we called her 

the responsible one. It’s the necessary 

shorthand that gets me: not for painjust 

pain. Also, how important the every

must have been/is, to have demanded/ 

demand space. The bottle is as old as I 

am, found on the dining-room table 

of a woman I’ll probably never see 

again. He took a picture of it and sent it 

to him, who shared it with me, who 

recognized myself in that faded scrawl.

 

Author Bio:

Kelly R. Samuels is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books, 2021) and two chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, RHINO, The Carolina Quarterly, The Pinch, and Salt Hill. She lives in the Upper Midwest.