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Given the rate of change, I deserve a rewind,
especially now in my eighth decade.
Turn life back, re-run it!
I haven’t got the plot down
and the characters are rebelling.
I’ve forgotten my friend’s faces
and can’t remember where I lived.
Clutching diaries written in Aramaic,
old boyfriends stalk my dreams.
The past drifts out behind me
catching everything at random:
dolphins, grandparents,
Chevy convertibles, pennies and pins,
landscapes that no longer exist
on faded maps written before wars
no one wants to remember.
What were Sal Hepatica
and Musterole used for?
I should be able to prevent
stupid accidents:
uncut myself while slicing onions,
not slip on pond ice
and erase that bruise from my tailbone,
remove my greasy lipstick
from his letterman sweater.
I can pretend to smooth out my face,
go back to 1960 and buy
a 3-bedroom house for $16,000.
I should even be able to resurrect the dead.
I have lots of things to tell them,
things I was too busy
to say when they were alive.
Jeanine Stevens’ poetry books include: Limberlost and Inheritor (Future Cycle Press) and Sailing on Milkweed (Cherry Grove Collections). Gertrude Sitting: Portraits of Women, won the 2020 Heartland Review Chapbook Prize. Awards include The MacGuffin Poet Hunt, William Stafford Award, The Ekphrasis Prize. She is Professor Emerita at American River College.