People Poems · CTP-0321

Marisa: Librarian-Mother Hyphen Hyphen Hyphen

2025-04-26 · Coral Gables

Original typewritten page for Marisa: Librarian-Mother Hyphen Hyphen Hyphen by Chris the Poet

Transcription

A librarian would give me nine words when I ask for three... Or is it because you're a mother that you make sure me and my typewriter are so well-fed? I could sit here and consider the issue the whole day long, I could spend weeks doing research on the topic at hand—Marisa...I could check out a whole shelf-worth of books (I might need help navigating your halls—I'm downright illiterate as far as the dewey decimal system is concerned) and never capture you entirely...even if I kept my stacks of your histories, your fictions and nonfictions, your picture books, romances, How-To books and encyclopedias well past their due date... So you couldn't say just "dog," but "dog-lover," not just "book" but "book-lover" saying lover twice because love is never redundant, People-pleaser" to supply me with alliteration—you offered me such a generous amount of time to convey yourself back to you that I know this point is true, My multi-hyphenate Marisa, always bucking the trends, nonconformist to the core, a total punk 'till the end—flicking off the adversities that have made you a survivor with righteous disrespect—here are more words, I've got hyphens to spare: Badass-good-damned-person-book-store-traversing-life-loving-certain-confident-comfortable-cool-as-a-cucumber-real-as-they-come-the-best-of-the-best-muchacha-numero-uno-filled-with-aplomb-the-GOAT-the-big-cheese-the-queen-of-the-ball-Marisa-the-librarian-mother-dog-loving-book-loving-people-pleas -er-noncomforming-surviving-star!