raquel is in the bathtub and the dog still has his testes. on tv they eat pastitsio which donna brought with your marijuana when you were still well enough to mispronounce pastitsio. there’s a groundhog in the garden we planted and never watered but still i blame him for the fruitlessness. its three months now and I know I haven’t visited your headstone but the muffins smell like nutmeg and at least I remember to…
While I was hiding empties in the bookshelf of my office you spoke to a recorder I gave you for your birthday, saving words I should have asked you for in person. I bought you audio versions of books I should have read aloud myself. I sent Raquel with chicken and rice soup while I refilled whiskey handles in the cabinet. I didn’t take you to the zoo to see Fiona ‘til you were dirt…
semi colon here or dash? a run on sentence grammar also dies note: this is one of a series of poems in a chapbook I’m working on entitled “yellows”. to read them in their intended order, start here.
“A six day drunk,” pep calls it, “back when showings were a week.” “At least!” mem nods, remembering rocking her brother’s death crib – she was five and he a perfect baby doll. “A six day drunk,” he carries on, “Out of town uncles passed out on the floor. Not anymore, a two hour wake if you’re lucky, plus the service, of course. Bing bang boom, you’re in the ground by noon.” In truth, we…
Raquel is reading crosswords to a zombie. Mum’s guesses are in gurgles, rasps, and groans. Google says that doesn’t mean she’s drowning So Raquel just writes “EPEE” for thirty down. She could maybe sleep with breathing machine beeping, Or even last week’s constant morphine pleading, But rusalka murmurs prove too much for slumber. She’s up until the sun comes up and then some. She gives another dose of meds, lays down – She wakes up…
“Too cloudy for meteors,” Raquel texts watching mum aspirate into a tube, “and they say it was once in a lifetime too.” From our triangle house all I perceive are those clouds, but the burning chunks of space hurling against the mesosphere are putting on a show I don’t have the right angles to see – gold and red behind the gray. “Get some sleep,” I say, and she won’t and the asteroids won’t. note:…
Marbled logbook rules: “Another forty minutes.” Mum moans and yellows. note: this is one of a series of poems in a chapbook I’m working on entitled “yellows”