Judith Terzi
This poem is based on letters that I wrote to my UC Berkeley roommate, some on blue airmail letter stationery that cost me 11¢ to send to the Philippines when she was in the Peace Corps. Fortunately, she is more sentimental than I am and saved all my letters, just recently sending them to me. I dedicate "What's New?" to LR.
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What's New?
letters between college roommates
I'm not yet in a state of bliss, just impatiently waiting.
We want to be possessed, carried over the threshold,
preferably by an existentialist. I saw F at Café Med,
then in front of Cody's Bookstore, skinny as hell,
a pony tail, thick black beard attached to six+ feet
of green corduroy spindles. I need a fleshier corps/core.
Must be real tricky having sex in the Peace Corps,
not getting caught in flagrante delicto by some lightweight
lackey. Of course F was w/ a Frenchie, a five-foot-
two blonde, they were smoking Gauloises, threshing
through The Stranger lying on the table. Oh hell,
we'll be 24 soon, unmarried, still on birth control meds.
My mouth waters thinking about the Mediterranean.
I know my mother's read The Prophet, got the core
about kids not being from you but through you. It was hell,
but she's signing letters "Love, Mom" again. Can't wait
to quit this credential program––I've got a low threshold
for Ed. Psych now. Bravo for learning Ilokano. Quite a feat!
B turns 28 tomorrow. Guess it's time to quit pussyfooting
around & start a family. (I'm finally off birth control meds.)
The city pumps here have exhausted their threshold.
The water's cut every night, & this isn't the Peace Corps.
Yasmine palpated my breasts, said they'd hold their weight
in milk. Good news. Still, though we've tried every hellish
pose from here to Upper Volta, no luck. Re-entry is hell,
no teaching jobs in L.A. I've started subbing to get a foot
in the LAUSD door. How's NY? At least I don't have to wait
tables or make espressos like we did at Café Med.
N insisted on selling the house. Another move, an encore
divorce. I'm living with J now, we're on the threshold
of condo-hood. (J's the gaucho in the poem about threshing
hair, mother telling the barber to chop my braids short as hell,
then keeping them in a hatbox w/ my baby teeth.) & the P Corps
reunion? So sorry about your dad's stroke. My mother has 1 foot
closer to la fin after hers. I'm doing lots of yoga, meditating,
taking care of me. Now I'm back at the empty house, a weighty
feeling, waiting for asbestos pipes to be removed, to foot
one hell of a bill. We're on the threshold of half a century––
no heart meds yet. Save our letters. I can use the corpus later.
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Judith Terzi's poetry has received awards and recognition from dotdotdash, Gold Line Press, Mad Hatters', Newport Review, River Styx, and elsewhere. Poems are forthcoming in American Society: What Poets See (FutureCycle Press), Poetry Project Anthology (Tupelo Press), South85, and elsewhere. Sharing Tabouli was published by Finishing Line in 2011. For many years a high school French teacher, she also taught English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria.