Welcome to WNIJ’s Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems written by northern Illinois poets. This week’s poet is Susan Goldberg.
Goldberg, a longtime resident of Rockford, is an attorney and a writer on legal topics for LexisNexis. Goldberg serves on the Board of Directors of Sinnissippi Audubon Society, Mendelssohn Performing Arts Center, and the Beloit International Film Festival.
Her poetry, often about her childhood in rural Indiana, can be heard on WNIJ's podcast Poetically Yours, as well as at poetry events in Rockford.
Here’s her poem “Finally.”
I have at last given up that frozen smile: the one that showed I was still part of the group, that no matter how crude or tasteless or mean were somebody’s words, I would smile, but stay silent. That way, I was still ok. Plus, sometimes it was someone I liked who said it.
Now, and it’s about time I would say, instead of a frozen smile I don’t smile at all, and instead my lips stay in a straight line and so do my eyebrows. I sometimes stay silent but because I do not smile at the crude or rude or mean or thoughtless words I am signaling that it’s not fine, it’s not great, it’s not funny.
And now I don’t care whether I’m in that group anymore, that group of kids standing around while someone takes a book of matches to show how a basketball team is made up of only one white guy,
That group of 20-somethings at a party who see the handsome guy named Jim smiling when he walks out of that darkened room where there is a drunk girl passed out on the bed,
That group of co-workers who snicker as one of them named JoEllen hoots and laughs about how one of her workers is so weird and uncool and says but anyway she’s such a nice person,
That group of wedding guests standing in the parking lot who all go silent when the groom’s mother walks by but then laugh at how she knew better than to say anything to them or they’d have let her have it,
That group of people hanging on every word of the politician who says it’s a done deal, there’s nothing that can be done, and look how many people will have jobs at this shiny new data center and besides it will bring money and lots of good luck to our town.
I do not have that frozen smile anymore. Instead I have a look that is unreadable except for when I lift my chin and tip my head to the side and dare them, when I ask: “What was that you just said?” and then I still do not smile and I do not walk away.
