Rachel Mehl

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY SKILLS

Look, I know I've been out of the workforce for a while,
but I've gotten really good at multitasking, like changing
a diaper while cooking dinner while writing a poem.

I also know a lot about the cemeteries in Whatcom County,
I've been to 30 of them, I still have 11 to go. Let me show you
the notebook I put together, it is better organized than my masters thesis.

My masters thesis is called "Why I Hate Horses." You can read it
in the Knight library if you can stand the pink walls. They are pink
like a grandmother's bathroom that smells of talc.

I really want a job I don't have to go to,
because I have my daughter all day. I want something that makes me feel
smart, like my brain has not gone to mommy mush.

Enough about me, let's talk about the cemeteries. How I remember each
like the body of a lover. What I mean is all that is left of so many bodies,
and all I can see is the marker with whatever information was written there.

Rachel Mehl loves salt and cemeteries. She has BA in poetry from Western Washington University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon. Her recent work is forthcoming in The Raintown Review. She lives in Bellingham, WA where she chairs the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest.