Tony Gloeggler Verse-Virtual 2016 March

March 2016

I probably started writing because nobody I knew was talking about the things I was feeling and thinking. Mostly my poems are attempts at finding some sort of connection on a different level—and I think that’s what I am still trying to do. If you want to check out more of my work, my books include ONE WISH LEFT with Pavement Saw Press and THE LAST LIE with New York Quarterly Books. UNTIL THE LAST LIGHT LEAVES which focuses on my relationship with a an ex-girlfriend’s autistic son and my more than 30 years managing group homes for the developmentally disabled is forthcoming with NYQ Books.

Easter

I’m up early folding the mattress
back into the couch. Helen is asleep
behind our closed bedroom door.
My stepson is sliding the first
of today’s maybe two hundred videos
into the machine’s slot. Even though
no one in this apartment has any reason
to believe in Jesus, last night
we pretended everything was good.
Jesse wasn’t autistic and Helen
wasn’t falling out of love with me.
We sat at the kitchen table, dipped
hard boiled eggs into plastic cups
filled with colored water. Jesse
crouched, his eyes level with the edge
of the table as he jumped in delight
every time we dunked an egg
beneath the surface. Helen
caught my eye a few times
and neither one of us could keep
from smiling. When Jesse lost
interest, walked back to his room,
we finished the dozen, hardly
talking. She then said goodnight,
took a book to bed while I played
the radio softly, thought about
how hopeless I felt as I bent
down, hid a purple egg under
the bed, leaned over to kiss Jesse
while he slept so perfectly.

-from The Last Lie