Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PICNIC, by JANE MILLER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PICNIC, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A mother and child activate the lawn
Last Line: The yard explodes.
Subject(s): Alienation (social Psychology); Discontent; Suburbs; Estrangement; Outcasts; Dissatisfaction


A mother and child activate the lawn,
the child in her sundress and the woman in white, barefoot.
Their Post Toasties are post-modern.
I sit closer to one of the speakers
that rests on the statistical curve of the backyard,
the long curlicue signature with the dot after it.
Every now and then I imagine
we could as easily have gone for a swim in the rain.
As long as we give someone a window
into our personal lives,
like how I spend the winter
in the desert and the summer by the coast,
somebody has to, then it's somehow
OK to be casual about the narrative.

Therefore casually in the grass
the violets paint the mother and child
with all of nature between them,
a dot of yellow shielding the sun.
This couldn't take place
on metromedia television, because the message
is the corsage the woman has on.
All form avoids recreation.
Memory has to have a good time too, at any expense,
the jerk who asks Who's the pimp here anyway?
and is a syntactic greeting.
Let's leave them alone, innocent, the baby
doesn't have to be a line nor the woman a sentence.
The yard explodes.





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