December 2024
Bio Note: I’ve had a lifetime of repairing houses as a contractor, licensed by the state and bonded by insurance. I’ve had an alternate lifetime of writing poems, unlicensed and with no guarantees. Both lifetimes keep out the cold.
Special
You can’t help but
watch them quarrel
about their ‘relationship’
as she calls it
while your coffee steams.
She finally says
“Can you tell me I’m special in any way?”
and he says
“I’ll think about it”
and you and everybody
at all the tables are silently urging
Leave now, sweetie
but she keeps badgering
“Tell me one way I’m special”
and he says
“I’m still thinking”
and she says
“Tell me!”
while his cheeks are slick with tears
“Tell me!”
until she rises from her chair
leans across the tiny table
kissing
solemn as a saint
deep as a canyon
slow as an era
and you have to look away.
Your coffee, everybody’s coffee
needs warming.
Originally published in Red Eft Review
Multnomah Falls
Mrs. Peters who just last week was teaching you
handwriting on Zoom, sweet Mrs. Peters
just died of the virus. Died really fast.
I hold you and ask how you feel.
“Small,” you say. “Really small.”
Me too.
We go to Multnomah Falls.
On the footpath bridge
water splashes cold wind.
Droplets form on eyelashes
which makes us feel we’re crying.
In the roar we have to shout.
A couple of bare-face teens are kissing
and couldn’t care less. You ask
if you may pull down your mask
to spit and watch the gob fall
down, down, down.
I say “Me too!”
and then we both spit.
I say “You know, don’t you,
you aren’t so really small.”
You, my spirit guide, you
take my hand and say
“The gobs will reach the ocean.”
Originally published in Bracken
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