Patchwork Prose and Verse
Ollie is upside-down
in the olive chair
chasing rabbits in
his sleep in the quiet
morning whirr of
the fan, coffee
steam rising from
my cup, Boo Radley
curled around my neck
like a fur-fringed coat
on the back of my chair,
Fitz hiding out under
the bed again
while I consider all
the fine porcelain
plates, these
place settings of past
destined to become
somebody’s mosaic
art piece of the
future
two summers ago
I bought a
night-blooming
Cereus for
ten dollars
thinking of
Dennis the Menace
getting in the way
of that plant that
blooms every 100
years and wondering
whether I’d be up
late enough to ever
see it bloom or
whether some
distraction would
forever keep me
from seeing it
but this very week
as a friend lost her
husband, this flower
bloomed in the dead
of night
like a smile from
Heaven
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
approaching the
edge of grief
alongside a friend
and the blur of the
numbing steals all
sense of time
and place and memory
of sequence of order
of hunger and thirst
of exhaustion in the
energy of fumes
we’d just returned
from lunch Tuesday
when her call came.
I’d missed it, called her
back to learn her
husband had fallen
from his chair at
work and she was
hospital bound.
I let our boss know.
A friend and I
arrived to a
room full of people
we did not know.
And just like that,
a lunch special
slice of pizza and
salad with lemon
water later, the
world is changed
forevermore
just hours
before she
broke down
in the waiting
room with the
declaration
we weren’t finished.
out by the tree line
of Loblolly pines
fifty feet from our
front door
where the Great
Horned Owl pair
chats across the
pine branches
at 5 a.m.
Ollie and Fitz
stopped in their tracks
to smell the rotting leaves.
They looked like charcoal,
only fuzzy. More like a
squirrel tail torn to shreds.
Or a rabbit.
I had just told my children
about rabbit, rabbit earlier
on the first day of June.
Was this a harbinger of
death for this poor
creature gone except
for its fur?
This farm holds mysteries
that will never yield answers.
It’s been the Johnson
Funny Farm since 1971
when three farmhands
saw a trio of cross-eyed pigs
but it’s not all funny here.
Sometimes there is
a twinge of horror against
all the laughter and tears.
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?
the closest we
ever got to a
rainbow was a
peacock feather
the day the two
went to Noah’s Ark
to look for things
to discover
to wonder about
I didn’t feel like
that kind of mother
who says a prayer
and leaves it in
the lap of Jesus
without worry
I was more
the warrior type
praying everyday
hoping all the
nickels would add
up to be worth a miracle
I knew in the back
of my mind when I
saw the Cheshire Cat
smile
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?
in the sluice
of a Skytrack
crush and run
puddle a gold
shimmer reveals
a tooth
then another
and before I
wonder about
whose teeth
I imagine the
last food
chewed with
these gold
capped jewels ~
a steak?
a pork chop?
a can of
Beanie-Weenies?
a worker ambled
past pointing
at the carnage
explaining how
the fight broke
out between
two men over
his cousin’s girl
(the cheater)
and though I
did not know
who grew
these teeth
I wondered
about the
places
they’d been
before landing
in the puddled
heap all
sparkly like a
sequined dress
never to be
worn again
Common Threads 