Poetry by Lannie Stabile

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It’s just the same day over and over and over and over and over, Mom says,
explaining once again how much she hates the movie Groundhog Day. 
She does not see the benefit of reliving one day a thousand times or more
and despises how a snowstorm can turn a selfish, arrogant prick into a god.

Every year, on February 2nd, Mom tells me she hates Groundhog Day,
and every year, on February 2nd, I tell her how this movie changed my life.
How God was a selfish, arrogant prick, and the snowstorm created a miracle.
I tell Mom that Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin wrote the perfect parable.

Every year, on February 2nd, I let Groundhog Day change my life again.
I feel the puddle, the cold shower, the toaster, the poetry, the song on repeat,
and send a prayer to Bill Murray, thanking him for the perfect parable.
But Mom has only her own experiences and doesn’t understand that I am

the puddle, the cold shower, the toaster, the poetry, the song on repeat,
She cannot recognize the miraculous sum of a thousand moving parts.
Mom does not understand that I also experience her unwillingness to learn.
She plays God, stirring up the same violent storms time and time again.

Mom refuses to accept that someday I will move away from her storm.
She does not see the parable in reliving one day a thousand times or more,
I watch Mom stir the same selfish, arrogant pricks time and time again, 
and it’s the same day over and over and over and over and over and over and

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Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry; the winning chapbook, Strange Furniture, is out with Neon Hemlock Press. She is a back-to-back finalist for the Glass Chapbook Series and back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Barren Magazine and is a member of the MMPR Collective. She was named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, is out now with Cephalopress. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile.

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash