Margaret Sullivan is a professor of Consumer Psychology and founder and Editor in Chief of The Journal of Undiscovered Poets. She has presented research on vinyl music consumption in thirteen countries. The American Psychological Association published her chapter on stigma and the media in the textbook, On the Stigma of Mental Illness. Most recently, her poetry was published in the Montreal-based literary journal Yolk. Margaret holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Playwriting.

Springtime in the Garden of Aggression

I came to the forested nether woods
to find serenity, to drink the water freely

to inhale deeply
without sullying my lungs or harming my heart

gentle, elegant harmony
that every poet finds in Nature

But Nature is not pleasant
and it is hardly natural

Outside my window the Rufus is driving
the Annas away from the hummingbird feeder

They must go hungry so the neighborhood bully
can take what he wants

Daffodils are poisoning daisies and lilies, emitting killer latex
They cannot survive a visiting snake swallowing a visiting mouse

Mice cannot survive a visiting eagle
snatching a visiting rabbit

I spray ROUND UP on the precious grass
I can kill 73 predators at once

and then I get to kill crab grass, weeds
anything that grows

White Legs

It was 104.
I was ashamed of my body.
My nose was too big,
my eyes were too small,
my hair was all wrong.
I needed a training bra.

My mother might have said something like
“You’ll be pretty when the time is right”.
Or, “This is what they call an awkward age.
You’ll grow out of it.”
Even at age eleven,
I would have known what to say.

In order to go outside
and face the world
I covered everything up.
I covered up my oily hair with a doo rag.
I covered up my body with a raincoat.
Mostly I needed to cover up my legs.

In New Orleans everyone over ten
has pierced ears with gold hoop earrings, white nail polish,
kitten heels, bushy blond hair, teased up high,
and creamy full breasts
pushing up over a tight bra
under an everlasting bronze tan.

I either didn’t possess
or wasn’t allowed to have
any of that.
The worst part was
my skin was wraith-like,
the absence of a tan.
I was pasty and greyish,
and I wasn’t allowed
to shave my legs.

Coarse black hair
under those ghostly
white legs

When I looked down
I couldn’t believe
I even had friends.
I guess I got great grades,
and always won
the spelling bee.

The hoop ear ringed,
French manicured,
blonde coiffed, tanned girls
made time for me—
let me sit on the bench
where the cool girls sat.

Sat beside me
on the trolley car,
chatted with me
in the lunchroom.
I attended
a Catholic school.

There was a holiday,
The Feast of Saint Gertrude,
and we had the day off.
As you know,
it was 104 degrees.
I was expected to do yard work,

but there was
no way
I was going
to let anyone
see my pasty
greyish hairy legs.

So I wore my jeans.
Three times
my mother shouted out,
“Get in here and put on a sundress!”
And “You’ll die of heat stroke. Put on a dress!”
Eventually, I surrendered.

I stepped back out
in a billowy
pink and white sundress
when a red GTO convertible
full of boys
slowed down, pulled up.

The cutest of them,
the one with the Ringo haircut,
gave me the once over
all up me and down me
I thought he was going to ask my name
But he said,

“Hey, White Legs”.

Before You Take the Twelve Steps

Frolic
with an alcoholic

Have a drink
over the kitchen sink

Get sauced
with your boss

Get loaded
til your head has exploded

Blow your mind
just after you’ve dined

Go on a bender
dent your right fender

Don’t be a miser
have a Budweiser

Have a cocktail
not a mocktail

Act like a loser
hang out with a user

Get shitfaced
with a pantywaist

Get hammered
until you stammer

Get trashed
act unabashed

Get really high
with just any guy

Sit in the dark
with a Maker’s Mark

Smoke some dope
with Francis, the pope

Now get sober
before your life is over

Hurry, get straight
before it’s too late

Eleven Haiku.

Cumulonimbus
washing the forests and fields
with tiny droplets

A single white cloud
is keeping the sky honest
glory to heaven

Good evening night time
you seem so alive that
I await your reply

Anxiety does
a faery dance—spores fly out
in faery circles

they mushroom other
new anxieties—then we
replay the music

I see the water
glimmering and gleaming and
I feel it inside

The least expected
things are the things that really
happen in life

We are, all of us
just about one phrase away
from weeping, for real

Japanese maple
caressing the Spring. It breathes
in all the sunlight

The I Ching today,
“you are showered with blessings”
Look up, here they are

Not quite enough light
to make it morning, not night
Drinking in the dawn

She Was Always

She was always
shouting at the eggs
the way they just would not cooperate
with her will
Sunday breakfast had better be nice
Or else
The eggs were going to get it
And then me

He was always
raging at the newspaper
it just would not fold correctly
his way, which was the correct way
I made the assumption
that it was all my fault
the bad news in the newspaper
surely, I was worse news than that
but I didn’t think
I had all that power