Patchwork Prose and Verse
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?
in the aviary at
Emory University Hospital
Midtown in Atlanta
trapped birds fly
in a viewing room
adjacent to the light of day
wondering how to
regain full
consciousness
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
Wife: Oh, good gracious! A tick!
(gets tweezers, removes tick, flushes it)
7 seconds later finishes
applying makeup, gets dressed and starts
writing before work in her favorite chair
***********
Husband: (hollers from shower)
Can you come here?
I need you to look at something!
Wife: (hollers back) I’m not falling for that again.
Husband: No, seriously.
I think I have a tick.
Wife: I’ll be there when you get out.
Husband: (parading into living room
towel wrapped around his waist,
still half-wet, hair every whichaway,
pointing just under his left nipple)
No wonder I’ve been itching since
we got home from camping!
Wife: Are you sure it’s a tick? It’s
embedded deep. It’s not a mole?
Husband: I don’t think so.
Do you have tweezers?
Wife: Yes, I’ll get them.
(brings them from makeup bag)
Husband: Here, you try! (hands tweezers back)
Wife: (rolling eyes)
Husband: Well, I can’t see that angle
Wife: There’s a mirror right
behind you (digging at embedded
tick, husband wincing)
Husband: Here, let me try
(takes tweezers)
Wait, do you have different
tweezers? These aren’t lining up right.
Wife: (goes and looks for another pair
brings them back 3 minutes later)
Husband: (still digging) I got part of it
Wife: The head is still in there.
Husband: I’ll dig that out later. I’m
going to be late for work…..
(dresses, kisses her, grabs coffee, leaves for work)
Wife returns to chair to finish writing
<writes: Ticks ~ Husband vs. Wife>
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
Day 2:
that one’ll make a lovely black and white
leather purse, I thought
of the bull grazing inches from my
bedroom window at midnight
on the Funny Farm
when our neighbor’s cows got loose
then I felt guilty
for thinking such a thought
next morning, my husband
called Wayne
turns out
another bull had gotten
into Wayne’s pasture
and their fighting
brought down the whole backside
of the fence bordering our farms
his entire herd was wandering
in the morning, cow poop
was everywhere
it’s just fertilizer
my husband reasoned
pointing to a
rounded one
the size of a dinner plate
that one’ll make a perfect
cow patty
Here are the two bulls ~ there were 8-10 cows in our front yard that night!
Day 1:
around midnight
over the sound machine
something woke me
I heard it ~
the bumping
at first
I thought it was
in the attic
(a squirrel? raccoon?)
something bigger than
the occasional field mouse
so common on our farm
but then
it was at my
head, behind the wall
my husband
heard it too
sprang into action
flipped the switch
floodlights revealing
a herd of cows
grazing in the grass
inches from our windows
two bulls
one black and white
one milk and dark chocolate
matching my leather purse
from White Oak Pastures
in South Georgia
my husband gave me last Christmas
I’d heard closer than usual mooing
from Wayne and Janice’s field
right at the fence line
behind our barn
earlier in the day
It’s okay, I told him~
probably Wayne’s cows
we’ll call in the morning
right now it’s a win-win
they’re cutting the grass
their midnight snack
we settled back in
mended our broken sleep
Common Threads 