The Refrigerator Poems

To the Park

I carry one baby on each hip
and push two in a double stroller.
One rides on my shoulders,
holding fistfuls of my hair.
One is strapped to my back
and another to my front.

We all eat ice cream in the grass.
Some of the babies eat grass

while I sing Lucinda Williams songs
in a sorrowful, southern drawl.
I used to be sorrowful,
but not anymore.

Now I sing to my babies
and I show them how to clap their hands
if they can manage to open their hands
and make them flat.

I hear the muffled sound
of my cell phone ringing.
It is my roommate calling to complain
about her job.
But I don’t understand unhappiness anymore.
I don’t have a job

and I don’t have a roommate.
I have babies.
I take them to the park
and sit them in the shade
and smooth the fine hair
off their sweaty, concentrating faces.