We All Need Something
A poem by Tricia McCallum

We All Need Something

You can hear me.
I know you can.
Despite the din of the socials,
The news cycle on a loop,
Each greedy nugget clamoring for a place in an eternal line.

The bigger the scale the less powerful you feel
To have any effect at all.
Will shrinking your carbon footprint matter an iota?
And you know how much you’d miss your RV.
Didn’t you once say those road trips
are the only reason you keep going.

The protective callous begins with a tiny bump
and raises itself, expands, strengthens.
Unsightly,
But just wear long sleeves.
No one will ever know.

About the Author:

Tricia McCallum is a Glasgow-born Canadian, a Huffington Post Blogger, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and Best of the Net winner. She has two poetry collections in print: The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press 2014) and Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered (2011). She publishes her prose and poetry online and wherever she can find good homes, blogging about women’s rights, mental health, wretched jobs she’s had (and they are legion), and even more wretched blind dates (also legion).

She writes about almost anything: falcons in Ireland, elephants being traipsed through the Queen’s Midtown Tunnel, stray island dogs, beleaguered mothers, small town beauty queens, and ill-mannered neurosurgeons. Underlying it all is her curiosity about how people navigate their lives and what it is they struggle with under the surface.

Poetry Breakfast is an online journal publishing poetry and short plays.
If you’d like your poems considered for publication visit our Poetry Submissions page.

Follow Poetry Breakfast
Facebook