3 poems by Joan Mazza

Mimeomia*

I’ve fallen into a stereotype, typecast
as the little old lady, gray haired, looking
at her feet, wearing clunky sneakers
and mom jeans, pigeonholed into a small box
on a shelf with broken paperclips, dull
pencils, and exhausted rubber bands.
The young ignore adages that link age
with wisdom, tune out ripened warnings
seasoned with experience. Only one clerk
at the grocery asks, How do you cook this?
when she sees artichokes or escarole
in my cart. In this cubbyhole of conjecture,
no one asks now what I did for a living,
how many careers I had, sure my life
was easy, carefree, where I made my own
schedule. They don’t know about the years
I worked three jobs, didn’t have time
to read or write in a journal. In that era
before computers and cell phones, I wrote
letters on rare days off. Why this belief
that people over sixty can’t think, don’t know
what’s going on, don’t follow the news,
don’t have the acumen of the long view?
Forget me? Dismiss my words? Read me
before I’m invisible. Ask me for a list
of topics I’d choose for my TED Talk.

*Mimeomia. Noun. the frustration of knowing how easily you fit into a stereotype, even if you never intended to, even if it’s unfair, even if everyone else feels the same way—each of us trick-or-treating for money and respect and attention, wearing a safe and predictable costume because we’re tired of answering the question, “What are you supposed to be?” from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.




 
Dystoria*

On a clear day
dull reality shines.
I’m one of billions
of humans
who have lived
and died
without tombstones
or descendants
who might carry
their names.
Not famous
or infamous
not remembered
by name or deed
or written words
published.
I hold no more
than a speck
of knowledge.
I’m a mote
in a shaft of light
a leaf from an oak
falling amid millions
on the forest floor
returning to soil
a grain of sand
curl of lichen
a tear      a hair
one gnat in a swarm
uncounted
its atoms returning
to earth.
I am melting
into the ocean—
one snowflake.

*Dystoria. Noun. A feeling of irrelevance from the broader focus of history.
From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. Pronounced “dis-toh-ree-uh.”

 




Boorance*

A time will come when we’ll look back
and wonder how we took this detour
off the road of our human inclinations,
ignored the urgings and longings
for each other that we expressed by love
for electronics. We’ll think back
with shock, wonder how we stopped
talking to each other over meals, didn’t
meet for drinks or coffee, but kept
scrolling, scrolling, counting virtual
friends and ignoring those beside us.
We’ll wonder when we forgot how
to talk on the phone or look someone
in the eye and attend fully, without
our devices beeping and calling us away.
We’ll wonder when we lost our empathy
and ability to sit quietly with another
without distraction, wonder when we
stopped daydreaming and listening to our
desires and memories and thoughts.
What were we thinking when we locked
ourselves into that prison and threw the key
out the window? It will seem like
a bad dream, an addiction that took
too long to recover from, as big
a mistake as believing we were safe
with that first sniff of crack.

*Boorance. Noun. An unassuming feature of our daily lives that will
eventually come off as the bizarre relic of a bygone era, that’ll make
us look back in shock that we ever thought it was normal.
From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. Pronounced “Boor-uhns.”

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Joan Mazza worked as a microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Potomac Review, Prairie Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Slant, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.