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Jennifer
Budenski,
a recent graduate of the Hamline University MFA program, teaches writing at an
alternative school above the Hopkins ice arena. She is the mother of two
beautiful children, Joshua Atticus and Sophia Grace.
Her poems have been accepted by ArtWord
Quarterly,
Purple
Canary Press and
Poetry
Motel.
She served on the editorial board of Water~Stone
and interned at ArtWord
Quarterly.
Jennifer Budenski
Spring
Cleaning
(my
driveway, April)
She
stops by with a trunk full of clearance furniture from Target (the
assemble-it-yourself kind), and it is spring, time for projects.
We work together on a bookshelf and don't follow instructions.
The screws are all mismatched, and though some would call it ugly, it
seems sturdy enough. She
hovers by the car, lights a cigarette.
I wait.
I
feel guilty I haven't been around much,
she says.
This is familiar territory.
Don't
worry about it, Ma.
I wonder how long she'll stay.
I want to get after the winter mess in the yard.
I
don't want to be in the way.
I pick at the drawstring on my sweatpants, exasperated by its fraying
ends.
Whad’ya
mean, Ma?
She
lights another cigarette before tossing the old one into my yard.
You’re
raising Joshua different..
God, she makes me tired.
Again with the time-to-let-him-cry-it-out-for-the-exercise.
I
just wasn’t educated,
she says instead.
I look at my shoelaces, neat tips touching the asphalt, couldn’t have
seen this coming.
God, it’s hot for April.
They say today might make a record.
Ma,
we turned out fine.
And when I say fine, I’m surprised because I mean the fine she wants,
not the angry one I save up for family occasions, and it feels good; it feels
fine to give her what she waited all this long winter to ask for.