Mary P. Myers

Postmodern Art

My childhood was a series of Norman Rockwell paintings. The youngest girl of six children, I thought all mothers were stay-at-home moms.

the aroma
of bread rising
suffrage white

By the time I was born, my father had earned a PhD in chemistry and subsequently secured a good career to support his growing family. Even though my mother had finished college, she said her chemistry degree was good for boiling water. Her Phi Beta Kappa key – for opening the formula cans. Consequently, I was college bound to get married. I went and I did.

covalence
my outer shell filled
in polar bond

Unlike my mother, I breast fed my kids and I can count them on one hand. I tried to raise them in a new era punctuated by freedom of choice. My husband and I concluded that I would use my college degree to earn supplemental income after our two kids grew up. My daughter became a math teacher and my son is in college getting a chemistry degree with aspirations of propriety law. Now, I am a substitute math and science teacher.

the shredding
of the Banksy girl
a job half done