"salesmen" poems - Hello Poetry

My mother was a first generation lesbian. My father, a first generation divorcee. His father was the one child of a public school teacher. He found my grandmother at 18. A farm child, one of seven. A painter, a baker. My mother's father a single boy to three sisters. His aggressive masculinity kept the line clear and thick. He found my mother's mother at 17. A middle of seven Pentecostal children. A beauty queen, an agoraphobic. Each had five children. The door-to-door salesmen/ homemaker and mother of boys duo bet it all to open a hobby shop. They were by far the poorest of the watermelon farming siblings. They were artists and explorers. The high school graduate and ladies man, was a logger before a father. And the single mother of 25 he left scarcely left her home at all. Neither pair made it big. But they made my father. A lonely, post middle aged man. The poorest of his brothers. A used to be pilot, and could have been teacher, a want to be pioneer. A nuclear family super fan who never got his way. And they made my mother. A nervous, eccentric hippie who doesn't know how to talk to her siblings. A woman working her *** off to excel at lower middle class. A builder, a fighter, a **** good mother. Even if accidentally so. She has plans to travel. He has dreams to live by a lake. And they made me. A single girl among three boys. A quirky, nervous tomboy. A thinker, a gardener, a climber. A loser and a dreamer by blood.

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Nov 17, 2015

Nov 17, 2015 at 5:20 PM UTC

kelsey-campbell

The Losers and The Dreamers

My mother was a first generation lesbian. My father, a first generation divorcee. His father was the one child of a public school teacher. He found my grandmother at 18. A farm child, one of seven. A painter, a baker. My mother's father a single boy to three sisters. His aggressive masculinity kept the line clear and thick. He found my mother's mother at 17. A middle of seven Pentecostal children. A beauty queen, an agoraphobic. Each had five children. The door-to-door salesmen/ homemaker and mother of boys duo bet it all to open a hobby shop. They were by far the poorest of the watermelon farming siblings. They were artists and explorers. The high school graduate and ladies man, was a logger before a father. And the single mother of 25 he left scarcely left her home at all. Neither pair made it big. But they made my father. A lonely, post middle aged man. The poorest of his brothers. A used to be pilot, and could have been teacher, a want to be pioneer. A nuclear family super fan who never got his way. And they made my mother. A nervous, eccentric hippie who doesn't know how to talk to her siblings. A woman working her *** off to excel at lower middle class. A builder, a fighter, a **** good mother. Even if accidentally so. She has plans to travel. He has dreams to live by a lake. And they made me. A single girl among three boys. A quirky, nervous tomboy. A thinker, a gardener, a climber. A loser and a dreamer by blood.