Month: April 2021

Lately I have been worried about the prairie dogs. They live next door in the empty lot near my classroom. I know they live there because of the mounds they make. Also, I have seen them. They pop out of their holes and stand tall on their hind legs in that way we all envision. That is all I have really observed them doing. I think they prefer to nest with their families. I know little about this species except they burrow underground and create little homes for themselves. I imagine a network of tunnels connecting them like roads in a neighborhood. Unlike other urban areas where I have seen prairie dog colonies, I never see their carcasses on the road. I am glad, because my gut always feels a little pinch when I see dead animals on the side of the road. I am thinking this group is pretty intelligent and have adapted to their environment.

This lot is like a rectangular state bordered on all sides by less geometric ones. On one narrow side: a busy street, one long side a neighborhood of trailer homes which wrap around most of the other narrow end. The other long side is split between two neighbors: a cemetery and my building. All of these are places built for humans, not wild burrowing creatures. I think I have come around to my worry.

 Defining this lot as “empty” is a human construct. This lot is anything but to the natural world. Multiple species of grass and native plants grow there. Birds play there and fill their bellies with what I am sure are hundreds of types of insects. And prairie dogs live there. What will happen one day is that like the space where my building now rests, someone will decide to build on that lot. What will happen to the wild things living there? Will someone take the time to relocate the prairie dogs? Are these the ancestors of prairie dogs who must certainly have lived below the ground where I sit at my desk and in the lot where I now park my car? Did some of them survive the heavy equipment that dug up their settlement and then smoothed it flat for a building’s foundation. Over on their Southeast corner where the cemetery lies is a fence, a border wall, of sorts. But the prairie dog can get under that, right? Maybe they are smart enough to know their days are numbered in the middle of that exposed lot, so they burrow deep underground beyond the fence into another place where underground dwellers lay. To me, that seems like a compromise and a symbiosis between the living and the dead. Coexisting ecosystems: growth and decay. 

 Maybe they are already making their way in that direction: the corner where they are least likely to encounter genocide. I don’t know if it is a possibility, but I hope it is. I would worry less.

JL, March 2021

© 2021 Joan M. Leinbach

I wrote this poem because my daughter told me the period I was inserting at the end of my texts was aggressive. Huh, and I just thought I was using grammar appropriately. It was created with Twenty Little Poetry Projects by Jim Simmerman.

JL March 24, 2021

Declarative.

My text punched her aggressively.

I wrote, “I need your help with dinner tonight.”

She saw words, but heard anger in the tone. The phone burned her hand, the 

smell of burning flesh suffusing her nose and mouth with bitterness

Her mother reached out from the screen to give a lashing, shouted at her and 

gave her a withering stare.

Abby there in her office in Grand Junction, Colorado suffered from the insult. 

That text was not aggressive, dear.

But maybe it was, and I don’t know the rules.

It’s not like I was throwing shade.

This phone has created conflict among factions.

If I were to complain that communication is dead, she would just casually 

say, “RIP.”

This irksome period of antagonism plagues me.

It is about as declarative to her as a riot.

Like she shrunk down to size, and was battered by punctuation.

Mommy was confused because of grammar.

Next time, I will think before hitting that key,

And use the more practical, nothing.

I will unlearn that which I did learn in time.

Oh esset annorum, et imprudente.* 

The period must step up to the guillotine and accept its fate,

As I in whose brain holds the intent still wonder over the dot by

the last word

* Oh, to be old and unwise

© 2021 Joan M. Leinbach

“I wrote this cheesy romantic piece from a receipt I found in the parking lot of a Safeway. The receipt had been run over several times. Just like Dante’s heart.” JL

 Items purchased:

ALMOND JOY

TAKE FIVE, REGULAR

REESES P-BTR

REESES MILK CHOC

2 QTY M&MS CHOC

SKITTLES WILD BRY

TWIX CARAMEL

M&MS FUDGE BROWNIE

Anton and Dante

When Dante awoke, the pattern of the carpet pressed into his cheek, he forgot for a moment where he was. He realized that on the floor all around him lay wrappers proving someone had been on a chocolate bender. A second later, he recalled that he was that someone, and the why of it all flooded back to him in a wave of nausea.

Hours earlier, he had opened the text and thought for a minute, Anton had meant to communicate with someone else, but that was not right. Anton was as faithful as they come. So he had to face the reality that on this day, in the produce department, during an ordinary trip to 

the grocery store for dinner ingredients, his text notification went off and the words, “I don’t want to be your boyfriend anymore,” burned brightly on the screen.

They were now emblazoned on his brain along with the living room shag. And thus “dinner” was provided by the Nestle, Hershey and M and M Mars companies. One after another, Dante sat weeping and peeling, wrapper after wrapper, stuffing his mouth full of peanut butter, chocolate and candy coating. A half an hour later came the sugar crash and the inevitable lowering of himself and all that grief onto the floor.

Dante raised up on his elbows and looked around the room. To his surprise, there was Anton, on the couch, legs crossed and reading the paper. “What the hell, Anton.” Dante exclaimed! I am trying to be pathetic! What are you even doing here?” Anton lifted his head and with a barely imperceptible lift of an eyebrow, said slowly, “You only read my first text, didn’t you.”

Dante reached out for his phone with chocolate covered fingers, eyes on Anton, and suspiciously entered his passcode. The screen lit up and there was Dante’s first text, “I don’t want to be your boyfriend anymore,” and below it, a second “I want to be your husband.”

© 2021 Joan M. Leinbach

A piece of memoir by Joanie Leinbach nee Buckley, Spring 2021

I have this childhood story I have been telling for years that must have happened in 1972 or thereabouts. We lived in Northglenn, Colorado and I was six. I don’t know if I was kindergarten six or first grade six. That is to say, I don’t know how much wisdom I had attained at this point. I remember I was six because this story is also about a girl who lived down the street from me and she was five, and I was 1 year older. That was important because it made me her elder and the responsible one. 

Also, allow me an aside here. Part of the story is that I had these terrible food allergies that defined me for a long part of my childhood, so at 6, you can imagine me in the thick of it. I felt continuously deprived of food I saw other kids have. White, Wonderbread sandwiches (wheat,) candy and popsicles (corn syrup) and ice cream (dairy) were all forbidden along with a million other things, and thus they haunted my dreams. My mother would plug my ears when she heard music from the ice cream truck.  She sent me to parties with: Rice. Flour. Cupcakes!  So, naturally, I was a (mostly sober) candy addict.

Anyway, I recall parts of this story very clearly like the day it happened. The rest of the story has been preserved (by me) through spoken word. Now, don’t go telling me about the flawed nature of the oral tradition. That may be true of some stories, but this one really happened. 

More things you should know. Somehow I knew about Sweet Tarts despite my mom watching me like a hawk.  I will tell you that I capital L-O-V-E-D Sweet Tarts. I knew knew three things about them: 1) a package cost 10 cents  2) they were available at this one drugstore where I had gone with my mother, and 3) the ditch that ran under the steep street on my way to school was the same ditch that ran under the busy road where that store was located. Don’t ask me to explain how a six year-old had the cartography skills to map out a route from her house to an aisle of Sweet Tarts, but it is true. 

I approached this like a mission. There were some critical preparations to be made. First, I emptied my vinyl Barbie case of its usual tenants and their accessories. I think, in my mind,  I needed a briefcase of sorts. I honestly don’t know what I placed in this bag other than a dime, but it isn’t critical to the story. I wish I did remember, though because you would probably think it was adorable. 

Next, I needed an accomplice. Said five year-old. Why I brought this girl is beyond me because as you will see, she was honestly a hindrance to the mission. Personally, I think it was an ego thing on my part. I wanted a witness to my brilliance. 

We headed out and walked down Marion Way, then right and up the hill toward Leroy Elementary. Halfway up we slipped off the road to the left and started walking West along the bank of the ditch. We bobbed along amidst tall, dry grass. I don’t know how far we traveled, but, eventually, we came to a street that lives in my child mind as an interstate highway (it wasn’t.)  The cars went fast! But we were also fast and we made it across, I vaguely recollect having to walk on this road a bit before arriving at the strip mall housing the drugstore. Three for sure facts are that we went into the store, bought the candy and made it back across. Then, I remember being back on the other side and starting the long trek home retracing our route exactly. 

I don’t know if I opened my Sweet Tarts. I think they were in my Barbie case. But my accomplice was chowing down when we saw two girls in the distance. They were this girl’s sisters. I knew the candy was exhibit one of a punishable crime, so I encouraged her to drop the evidence before they took us into custody. But she refused and of course they knew exactly what we had done and they said, “Ummm, you are gonna be in so much trouble.” I did not have sisters as I was pretty much an only child (my brother was a baby, so he was not yet a snitch.) 

So my neighbor friend got, basically, dragged home by older elementary-aged kids and I took myself home. My mom was not there, but my dad was. I think he was supposed to be watching me. I have no sense at all that he was in ANY way concerned about my missing persons status. One thing you should know is that HE and his twin were the oldest of 6 other siblings, and six of these people were boys. You KNOW they got into their share of mischief. 

So I came clean to my dad. And you know, what? I did not get in trouble at all! I actually think he was impressed, like I was a chip off the old block. I remember the mom of the girl talking to my mom about what we did. My mother was pretty mad when she came into the house, but dad just said, “Doris, I have handled it.” That was great. I found out the other girl got a spanking, and her mom told my mom she was not allowed to play with me anymore. I can’t remember how I felt about that.  Here’s what else I don’t remember: did I make it home with the loot, or not?

© 2021 Joan M. Leinbach