Jill Klein

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Ode to a List-Maker

You make fire
for the first time
and it’s like you tried to climb
out of the crib.
Burning up,
you check off
caroling
and sex.

You find the last sock
you were missing.
You’ve had
an orgasm.

Your pleasure is leisure
wear. Leisure is wearing pleasure
until it wears off. Check.

You favor erasable white boards
but your husband erases
things he hasn’t done.

You are not kidding.
You grind your teeth at night.
Your night guard keeps your teeth
out of the dentist’s metal cup.

You want to skip skip skip
to the end of the list,
but Nana always said
you’ll catch up
when you’re dead—

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Jill Klein                           

Jill Klein holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and a BA from Stanford. In between came years of stay-at-home parenting and a career in commercial bank lending. Her poems have been published, or are forthcoming, in Bellingham Review, Borderlands, Portland Review, Radar Poetry, Rattle, The Fourth River, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. She lives in the heart—if there is such a thing—of Silicon Valley.