Frozen January Mornings
by Robert Cooperman
When acquaintances call me, “Robert,”
I correct them with, It’s Bob.
“Robert” still conjures frozen January mornings,
Mom shouting, Robert, get up, you’ll be late for school!
Her voice, fingernails screeching
down the blackboard of my spine,
the bedroom window milk-crusted with frost,
the bare floor shooting ice-tentacles up
from the frozen lake of Dante’s Inferno,
and all I wanted was to lie warm in bed.
Fat chance! If her first volley failed,
the second was louder, closer, threatening
she’d rip the comforter off: no choice
but to bolt up and throw on clothes.
And where was Jeff in all this commotion?
In the next twin bed, young enough
not to be bothered with school yet,
and possessing the rare talent of sleeping
through even Mom’s volcanic summons.
At least she kissed me on the cheek,
to let me know she loved me,
as she handed me my brown bag lunch,
expelling me from this brief Eden.
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Right now this is my favorite unpublished poem; it makes me smile, now, to remember those mornings, which were such hell back then.
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ROBERT COOPERMAN "a Brooklyn boy, right down to a B.A. at Brooklyn College," moved to Denver in 1974 to study in the joint Literature-Creative Writing Program, and received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and 19th Century British Literature. He has taught English at the University of Georgia and Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. He lives in Denver with his wife Beth. His volume In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (Western Reflections Pub. Co., 1999) won the Colorado Book Award in 2000.