April 2024
Bio Note: My poems have been widely published, including in my collections Signs of Marriage, Mother, One More Thing, and Intimacy with the Wind. Learn more at my website. I’m an avid cyclist, long-distance swimmer, paddleboarder, nordic skier, hiker, and gardener, whose poem, “Pat Schroeder was our Mother” won the 2023 New England Poetry Club E.E. Cummings Prize.
Megan, TIAA Specialist
Don’t sweat that you have to deal with the lady who insists you are mistaken, her quarrelsome attitude sufficient to overturn a truck, while she tries, in that running-of-words way she has, to explain that minimum distribution, or deceased’s dates of birth and death, have no place in your conversation, at least her end of it. Each time you try with date, setup, or plan, her breath, her exasperated breath— the steam she tries so hard to restrain, but you hear it seep out with a whistle— she tries another approach, mentions the IRS, the new inheritance regulations. To these you parry with the paperwork she filed last year, and she almost pops a cork, saying she’s been down that road on other calls many times before. Stay calm, Megan, child that you are, and let her seethe until she looks up a name, the name of the agent she calls her magic man— a man whose last name is a first name, and first name, a last. Search through his notes, and there it is!—she is right, but don’t let on, just ask her to hold, one or two more minutes, while you hope she cools down, and when you return, confirm for her in your calm, kitty voice, that payments were indeed already set up for her, say Backend team, say SWAT, repeat these for her, until she writes them down. And now, Megan, as if she is the child, explain how to find these payments, hidden even from you, so how could you know the information you impart is false? Finally, you hear contrition blossom from her— her apology for her all-but-rude chastisement, those words you long for, even if insincere— I’m sorry. Thank you so much.
Golden Shovel: Drive your Cart and your Plow over the Bones of the Dead*
Without a car you need willpower to drive— willpower and capacity. Your car, always ready to cart you, your precious belongings, and your go-anywhere necessities—your harmonicas in any key you play to the traffic as you plow under your wicked thoughts and over all those past regrets—the times you didn't think you had breakable bones, the times you didn't know what you were running out of— time, precious time—that one day the time would slip. You'd arrive home to find a brother, dead. *This golden shovel is based a line from William Blake's Proverbs from Hell.
Hospice Hospital
The lights never dim here on my throne
so I close my eyes—my lids heavy, thick.
The nights are worst—the screech owls trill
from outside these walls. A man with a gun
takes out a whole room before shooting
himself. A professor, like me. I wake
from the parch—thick moss in my throat—
reach for a cup—sip the liquor of life.
But this is no life—who has condemned me
to this hell of foam and florescence—my girls?
How could they? Take me back
to the hospital of yesterday.
I know now I’ll never leave here alive. I know
now this hell is my final resting place. Please
let me die. Who are all these shysters
walking around here selling—what?
graves and ash? I used to walk miles
singing the trails—Len’s tenor to my baritone—
pied pipers we two as we hopped
from stone to stone in song.
Back then I could stand up from bed
as I now only imagine—
look at me constrained to this mattress
unable to move—my lips cracked dry
my belly
a moon.
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