Patchwork Prose and Verse
when the world
takes on its murky
hue and the heaviness
of the anchor spirals
downward making it
hard to keep my head
above water I wonder
about my age
and whether I’ve
depleted all the
happy chemicals
or whether I
just need to
eat a banana
rarely do I ever
get to see true
hold my beer
moments as I
did last week
we’d just finished
dinner when a
dad waiting for
a table took his
baby on a shoulder
ride through the
parking lot,
stopping over the
grate to pretend
to dump the kid
in the hole
he didn’t dump the
kid, he lost his
air pods ~ the case
fell from his pocket,
one pod from his ear
he took the baby back
to the mama and
returned with a buddy
who set down his
beer and went
in the hole for
the retrieval
the old lady in me
was nervous so
I stood in the road
to warn oncoming
cars that there was
a crisis in the manhole
and just like that
the pods were back
in his ears and their
table was ready
at 4:37 I heard
scrambling of paw
on wood floor
ticky-toe hurried
steps toward
the bedroom door
next the whining,
different from normal
pleas, like someone
stepping full weight
on my Boo Radley
then a return to
the bed, where he
turned in circles
bumping us with
his body to wake
us up, then lay
between our heads
trembling
panting
as if there were
a ghost.
I took them out,
all three,
in the light balmy
mist of the
pitch black
Georgia backwoods
starry skies
thought of the bits
of squirrel tail
over near the tree
line where violent
death hung in the
recent air
we came back
inside, and I turned
off the light to return
to bed.
A flicker after the
switch-off, and I
knew.
Hello, Mom!
every few days
I have the urge
to sell everything
we own and move
into the camper with
two plates, two forks,
and two spoons
and share a knife~
to retire, take to
the highways, see
the changing landscape
of America, pulling
our flatware and
plates from
site to site
no particular place to be
no pressing deadline to meet
then I come to my senses
trying to reckon with the
reality of the silverware
drawer and all those
cabinets.
Visual Vexations
my brother and I
wonder still: were
Mom’s Lewy Body Dementia
confusions visual
distortions or hallucinations?
She saw a little boy in an
orange shirt sitting all alone
at the storefront and worried
about his safety.
We saw a pumpkin.
She saw strange men with
bunches of bananas
under the carport.
We saw family members
building her a wheelchair
ramp with Dewalt power tools.
She heard voices playing
tricks on her. We heard
branches scratching
the shutters in the wind.
Still, we wonder what she
would see now.
Would she know we are
her children, making our
way through this carnival
funhouse with all these
distorting mirrors
of the complex
and the concave,
wondering, too,
what things are?
all this rabbit rabbit
of yesterday to have
good luck all month ~
a maddening superstition
bringing more stress about
the forgetting is bad luck
enough to forego the
continuation
to begin to ask why
we do this to ourselves
why rabbit, rabbit?
they were getting
ready for an afternoon
wedding when the
husband stepped out
of the shower, kissed
his wife, said
I love you, Blue Eyes
laid down on the
bed and died of
a heart attack
leaving her and
their four sons
grieving
this is why when
my husband came
to my bedside
this morning before
stepping into his
shower and kissed
me I wondered:
should I give him
an aspirin?
should I take one?
Day 6
our Boo Radley
did a most
surprising thing ~
our Boo
forced a threatening
brown bull to retreat
to turn tail
and
take to the woods
or was that his intention?
was he a charger of bulls
or was he a shepherd
of cows?
was he herding them
back in their farm direction
because he knew they
were lost, drifters one
farm south of theirs,
needing a nudge?
this is, after all
the Funny Farm,
where you have
to be a little
sideways to end
up here in the
land of the
unexpected
where wrinkles in
perceptions become
realities like this:
Boo Radley is a
shepherding schnoodle
of lost herds, the
meanest bulls not
excluded, because
he knows how it feels
to be lost, looking
for home, aggressively
persuading them not
to give up a good thing
all this brings back
the day we were
on the beach
late afternoon
on a cloudy day
sipping wine
on a blanket
when two women
much further into
their bottle
walked by us too close
to our beach campout
according to Boo
Boo corrected
them
~not politely~
and in their swagger,
in their smirks,
their chuckles,
one taunted back:
oh, what a little badass!
fast forward
the years
to today and I
want to go back
to that moment
and say
yes ma’am,
he certainly is!
he fulfilled the
prophesy at the bottom
of your
wine bottle
you saw the future
of our little rescue
Schnoodle named
Boo Radley~
a champion badass
herder of bulls
you weren’t bullshitting
Day 5:
from the corner
of the house
I could see
the bull’s nostrils flare
I covered my eyes
and peeked through
two fingers
with one eye
our little rescue dog
the Schnoodle we
named Boo Radley
for his timid demeanor
the Schnauzer-Poodle mix
abandoned
in a duplex
by his former family
found by a landlord
matted and starving
thirsting to death
our Boo Radley
with more issues
than a decade of
Saturday Evening Posts
Boo, who trembles
when a cell phone dings
who drops his ears
when we pick him up
who has a nervous
breakdown when he
smells the heat
from the toaster
who sits and stares
down the driveway
when one of us
should be coming home
our Boo Radley
did a most
surprising thing
Day 4:
the brown bull
dropped its head
ready to charge
I felt surely in my
soul I was about to
witness Boo Radley
being trampled
and killed
because
though he is small
he is tenacious
ten times the size
of that monstrous bull
in his inflated mind
what happened next
was a viral Tik Tok
never to be seen
except in my own memory reel
Boo Radley
charged the bull
zigzagging
cutting left to right
back and forth
front paws
low to the ground
cussing the bull
for all he was worth
edging up to the bull
its dropped head
meaning nothing to Boo
from the corner
of the house
I could see
its nostrils flare
I covered my eyes
and peeked through
two fingers
