I NEVER HAD MY WISDOM TEETH REMOVED

by Alicia Caldanaro

If now is not part of the past, why does the past often go back and forth in my mind
during present moments? It either hangs over my head like a black cloud or burns like
Jack’s fabulous yellow roman candles. Mouths get canker sores and backs break out in
hives. As the escalator gave my ankles a break from shopping, Santa Claus looked up
at me, smiled, and waved. Raindrops became a shower. Gene Kelly gave me his umbrella
and I started dancing. My dance was not as cool as the dance Jenna Ortega choreographed
and performed herself on Wednesday. However, she wears black, I wear gray, and my
piano teacher told me I was one of her few students who did not need a metronome. What
is it with my veterinarian who explained to me, after she removed forty percent of my cat’s
teeth, that they were rotten because of his poor genetics? She left his front canines and
incisors, but was that supposed to soothe him and me? I named my cat Aslan (“The Great
Lion”) because he processioned between my two rows of orange cosmoses where I counted
twenty-nine aggressive bumblebees pollinating in the hot afternoon. A week after Aslan’s teeth
were yanked out, an abscess developed under his chin and it burst when I was on my way out
the door. I padded his open sore till it stopped bleeding, left him in the house, raced to hear
a poet give a reading, and the day improved. It took a month to not see Aslan’s sore mouth
of red inflamed gums. The only item I ever buy in gas stations is pink bubble gum because
I cannot find it at most grocery stores. My two-year-old niece will repeatedly watch me
blow bubble gum bubbles. One time Grandma Agnes started at the crown of my head and
ran her hand gently down the back of my hair while Aunt Ann handed me a chocolate chip
cookie. Masking tape would not hold up my poster of Mulder and Scully so Mom gave me
duct tape. When I was in second grade, Grandma Rosie gave me my first poetry book,
Marigold Garden by Kate Greenaway. Aslan left a dead bird on my front step today. No one
knows what will happen.

THIS ISN’T AN ALL-NIGHT DINER

I am as mad as Yosemite Sam!
When my feet move forward, the
orchestra gives each stomp a strong
staccato. Take the keys and lock up
my fair lady. You didn’t say UNO!
Lonely preparation
and unmelodious response.
See a penny? pick it up!
Too many choices: Pink Lady, Fuji, McIntosh,
Jonagold, Jazz, Golden Delicious,
Honeycrisp, and Granny Smith.
Grandma always said:
better than sliced bread.
Vegetable knife in my right hand.
Band-Aid on my left thumb. Singed
skin from cookie sheets turns into blisters
that change to small, white, and
unerasable marks. Forthcoming book…
still in progress. Distasteful raw carrots were
inaudibly spat out by a rabbit.
Yosemite Sam strained Mel Blanc’s voice the most.
I make a mean carrot cake despite it all—

HAUNTED NEON LIGHTS

I knew it was over. I folded the red construction paper
in half, drew half a heart on the fold, and the scissors
were too dull to cut the heart out. Time to move on
because…what were we going to do? Hang out? No.
It was time for the sovereign remedies—
I relied on Matt Foley who shouted, “La Dee Frickin’ Da!”
in his “van down by the river,” and who fell a million
different ways then exclaimed, “Whoops-A-Daisy!”
to cheer me up. I laughed along with Elaine when Jerry
put the Tweety Bird Pez dispenser on top of her purse. I
wanted Kramer to put up a screen door and spray potted
azaleas, and afterwards we’d sit on old lawn chairs from
the 1970s: woven straps of green and white stripes held
together with Phillips screws in the aluminum chair frames.
I wanted to grill hamburgers and roast marshmallows
over charcoal. I could not wait to devour the toasted-to-a-light-
brown (on the outside) and the semi-melted, glossy-sweet
fluff (on the inside) of the marshmallows. You knew I was
better when you did not see me crying during most of the Little
House on the Prairie reruns I binged.You were proud of me
when at the midst of a table d’hôte, I did not yodel back to the
lonely goatherd. You laughed when I asked three friends to join
me and we copied the overlapping-legs-walk from the Monkees.
You knew I’d recovered when we watched the flowers growing
by the lamppost that told me it had rhymes for me.

BIO

Alicia Caldanaro was born in Valparaiso, Indiana, in 1968 and graduated from Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, in 1990. She studied at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she earned her Master of Library Science degree and “Specialization in Special Collections” certificate in 1999, which included working on the manuscripts of Athol Fugard. Her past work experience includes being a librarian at academic libraries. Alicia has several published poems, and she took Advanced Poetry Writing courses at Indiana University South Bend in 2023, taught by Professor David Dodd Lee, which encouraged her lifelong love of writing poetry. Her poems have appeared in Plath Profiles, Abandoned Mine, North Dakota Quarterly, Caesura, Analecta, and Laurel Review. Forthcoming: Willow Review. Forthcoming: Alicia will have a book of her poems published by Finishing Line Press entitled, The Needle Has Landed.