Invisible Work
June 24, 2024
My poem “Invisible Work” is available at Thimble Literary Magazine. It was inspired by reading Kevin Wilson’s novel Now Is Not the Time to Panic, which made me think about some of the things I did in the 1970s while growing up in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
The poem is about my friend Brad, who drove a yellow Pinto, and my friend Doug, who would catapult himself down the stairs of my house every time he came over, just like Chevy Chase opening Saturday Night Live. It’s about cruising Broadway with our friends the Grimms, what we did to our friend Nancy, and my refusal to take anything seriously, which annoyed my friend Bill.
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Necromancy Never Pays 
I really enjoyed this as a narrative, Jeanne – a reminder of how cocking a snook at staid middle-class appearances mattered as a statement of rebelliousness – sometimes we weren’t quite sure what exactly we wanted but we sure as hell knew it wasn’t what was on offer…
Much as I hate to admit it, the feeling you got from the poem (what I hoped to get across) about things I did as a teen in the 1970s might have come, at least partly, from imitating the rebellion of older teens in the 1960s.
When I looked up “cocking a snook” I saw that snook, from snout, means thumbing one’s nose at someone or turning the nose up at something. Dictionary dot com says “This expression was first recorded in 1791 and the precise source of snook, here used in the sense of “a derisive gesture,” has been lost. It is more widely used in Britain but is not unknown in America.” It made me think of a line I use a lot, from Romeo and Juliet: “do you bite your thumb at me, sir?”
Really lovely Jeanne!
Thank you for reading it and commenting!
Most teens don’t use their energy and angst so inventively. A tip of the hat to you. 🙂 I’ll share your poem with my son-in-law, who is from Cape.
A mix of inventiveness and desperation, perhaps. I did feel trapped as a teenager in Cape Girardeau. Also I don’t meet many people from Cape; it seems like they don’t move away.
You have so many friends 😮
Sadly, I’ve lost touch with many of these high school friends.
I like the line “survive the force of our feelings.” I am pretty sure that I never felt as deeply or as much as I did when I was a teenager. Or maybe I’m just better at disassociating now.
It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?
Thanks for picking out a line and saying you like it–that’s one of the best kind of compliments, as far as I’m concerned.