Since
Ground Hog Day
Alan B. is playing cribbage in the
beginner’s lounge
and yet I know he died supported by his two
sons
at his daughter’s house in Green Bay on
Valentine’s Day
and that he lived long enough to see the
Packers win
Super Bowl 45 and just 5 months before had
led my team
to victory in a Mini Golf tournament in
Lincoln, New
Hampshire on his final tour to say
good-byes and choose
a place to die. He didn’t choose my mother
and I
for his final days. It was better that
he choose his children.
Even if his ex-wife, their mother, was near
enough to spit.
And his brother might not have notified me
if my Valentine
chocolates been undeliverable. In
Arlington. Virginia.
Where Marines might choose to die. My
honorary brother.
Who only on that last walk in the woods
told me he’d had
a crush on me. And I’d thought of him as a
baby. Just three
years younger than me. Even dying his neck
was
a leatherneck iron post. The big-rock, of
our childhood, revisited,
was merely a stone. I still keep getting
status messages.
It’s well past Easter, he’s still playing
cribbage,
in the beginner’s lounge.
So the
waitress says. . .
are you
done working on your pickle? and we
are
laughing harder than a pair-of-dice swinging
from a
rear-view mirror. My diaphragm
hurts,
I’m tasting brine and smelling juice
and the
jukebox is playing a song about dandelion
wine and
all I can see is your red weeping face.
We needed
this. A bee buzzing our lips with
honey.
It’s Becca’s first day stepped up from
busser to
server and she’s already scored a twenty
dollar
tip here at Lou’s. You’ve been researching
the
history of diners. I know all about it. How
the heavy
porcelain cups were made from war
materials.
How SOS, chipped beef on toast,
isn’t
quite right for ‘best family dining’ 2008,
but they
won the People’s Award anyway, so its
bloodhound
in the hay, bossy in a bowl, whistle
Betties
and cackle fruit and drag one through
Georgia.
We’re gonna be saying it all day. All
week. The
Dictionary of American Digestion
hanging
on a chain by the always out-of-order
pay
phone. Dial up maiden’s delight or mystery
in the
alley. Bec’ gonna learn there’s more than one
way to
provide good service. (NO NO NO
I didn’t
say THAT. See where the stream on conscious
can take
you.) Oh nervous puddling.
Put out
the lights and cry. Shingle with a shimmy
and a
shake. (How high can a toddler stack
those
little packets of marmalade and jelly?)
Oeuf’s
brouilles! The sealed shut windows are asking
To
breathe. And you said thank goodness the
waitress
was already seventeen.
Torn Silk
I could
say your death was like the changing
of trees
at the end of September. I could say
you hung
on like a spider swinging on her
broken
web. I could say I still taste your scent of old ash
and
sodden hay, hear your hot grey breath, feel
your blue
veins whistling an intended lullaby.
Mother,
youngest sister, grandmother, why didn’t
you make
it to New Orleans? You might have taken
that
imagined trip Fat Tuesday on the back
of your
cousin’s Triumph, ridden it through
the
Florida panhandle past winter circus grounds
and a
thousand gulls. I remember you singing,
‘what’s
it all about, Alfie,’ stirring soup on the stove
in your
little post-war pre-fab kitchen,
singing,
with a thousand other women, an anthem
of
betrayal and hope. As if loving a man made him
a hero.
As if tout le monde meant something in his language
or mine.
No, the swallowtail freedom of tomorrow
did not
embrace you. The iron butterfly did not press you
to her
maiden breast. Did you tell me you loved me?
I told
you nothing. I was not the last to whisper
in your
ear. Children will whisper the truth. That’s all.
That’s
enough. Tout le bonheur le monde, sweet cadaver.
That
little clock betrayed you. It sang of autumn.
You died in spring.
Kelley White - Pediatrician
Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Poems have appeared
in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is
A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) Recipient of
2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant she is Poet in Residence at
Drexel’s Medical School. Her newest collection, NO. HOPE STREET, was
recently published by Kelsay Books.
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