Making Do

Life inevitably brings annoyances and inconveniences our way, and we all have our own methods of getting through them. In her poem “Because I became allergic to chocolate when I was seventeen,” Shuly Cawood writes about how she coped with what I consider a truly tragic allergy. Alison Luterman, who’s stuck at home while her friends text her from their vacations, escapes by taking walks around her neighborhood, as she recounts in “City Chickens.” You can listen to the authors read their poems by clicking the Play buttons below. We hope they might give you a new perspective on a challenge of your own.

Take care and read well,
Nancy Holochwost, Associate Editor

Because I became allergic to chocolate when I was seventeen
By Shuly Cawood

because a rash spread on my chest when I ate mole sauce at Sanborns; because acne populated my face every time I drank hot cocoa; because I believed it to be easy to give up something I loved; because I skipped Hershey’s Kisses and Snickers bars and Reese’s peanut butter cups; because when dark chocolate became a craze, I didn’t understand what the big deal was; because I bought carob and believed it was good enough; because I forgot it didn’t really taste like chocolate at all; because I kept going down that same road; because I did not look back; because a person can lose a thing and not miss it even though everyone thinks they should; because I lived through three decades of carob-coated peanuts, carob-coated raisins, bags of carob chips; because when I dared to taste chocolate again, tentatively, nothing bad happened; because I stood still and closed my eyes and savored it for longer than I ever thought I could; because only then did I understand why people felt sorry for me all those years I did without; because sometimes it takes a long time to see the canyon of a loss, to look deep into its vacancies; because for so long I did not understand all the other hollow doors I’d chosen with their loose knobs, all those roads I’d traveled with their pocks and cracks, their darkness and dead ends; because I had dark chocolate for breakfast this morning; because now not a day goes by that I don’t eat it, its bitter taste laced with sweetness, and regret.

City Chickens
By Alison Luterman

They strut around their concrete enclosure, pecking for seed, 
like disgruntled old ladies making a mild fuss

about the food, while empty chip bags and soda cans
blow against their rusty chain-link fence.

I have a friend vacationing in Portugal as we speak. 
Another touring temples in Japan. Yet another on a tiny island

off the coast of Greece, while I’m marooned here, 
counting steps around the same old city block,

exchanging daily WhatsApp messages with the friend 
on the island. She wonders if she’ll ever settle down, 

and if not, is something wrong with her? Probably. I mean,
there’s something wrong with all of us. I never thought 

I’d end up like this, domesticated as a pet lamb, 
with a mate who worries our hundred-year-old house

needs new everything, shingles to foundation. 
But such is fate. Oh, my sweet, my stick-in-the-mud, my dear,

who still touches my face tenderly
in the kitchen and knows I’ll always hanker 

and hunger, whine and sigh over other people’s Instagrams. No fix 
for an itchy mind. We’ll probably never go anywhere,

but it’s OK (most days). I’ve seen Paris. I’ve been to Peru.
Passing the chickens a second time, I wonder,

which neighbor was it who sought to create 
their dream farm scenario in an East Oakland tenement? 

Enclosed by a chain-link fence, guarded by a slobbering dog, 
the hens pick their way with scabrous claws

over pebbles and cement, emitting soft, gossipy squawks.
They’re distant descendants of dinosaurs, and like all of us

they wear their ordinary disguise, scanning the world 
for food or danger with hungry eyes.