Poetry Group

Nine of us sat around the cheap, folding table
covered with a stained bedspread
baring our souls and changing our lives
at the end of each line of poetry
we cautiously shared.

For eight weeks
drinking green tea
and snacking on nuts
and homemade puddings,
we took our turns
growing bolder and bolder.

Sally, the owner of the meeting house,
a mousy housewife with a runny nose,
a chubby caretaker,
a retired CEO,
a personal caretaker that loved her cat,
a large man wearing shorts fashioned from sweatpants,
his thin, nervous wife filled with the spirit of the Lord;
the grim, suspicious moderator
with no sense of humor,
and me – a middle-aged man
with an attitude and a loathing for
rules of grammar
and authority.