prisoners

Hospice.

One of those words like Buchenwald,

otherwise inferior, where you imagine no eagles nests.

Hear it

and you grab for the leg burned

while tailgating the Tigers game in 2010,

the year they went to the world series

too frightened to catch the ball.

And you say, oh s**t,

I shouldn't be grabbing my leg,

not now, not after five years

of worn carpets and nerve to

wear the shorts your daughter says

is too short for a man my age. Not

after several identical experiments where human

faces were attached to the back of human heads.

(yeah, like that was going to work)/ Aunties

cancer had spread throughout her body

and there was nothing else to be done.

Too advanced for chemo, sister painted her nails

and did her lipstick, "Pink in the Afternoon"

by Revlon, where she smiled as if the power

of vanity, when abundantly fed, lives on.

She left us that evening. Sister took her coat

from the closet. Mother her purse.

But i'm a poet.

What's that you ask?

i'm someone who see's the Ivory soap

floating in a tub of blood and picture it,

exact in all details,

sailing   from Byzantium.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

this is powerful...especially the last few lines...the details...i did not see my mom with hospice...the time was only less than a week before she passed...but from miles away i imagined, and somehow felt what she felt, saw what she saw when she opened her eyes....knowing she knew the end was near...observations of a poet...and you are abundant with them...my mother was dressed and answered the door when they came to take her to the hospital....she seemed fine...and then....once in the hospital, she just went to that place, and never came back.

jacob

[WEIGHWITHWORDS]

"But i'm a poet.".....this poem is great on many levels. It's personal...there's this unmatched truth to it...(like no one but you could write this)...but from the quoted line at the beginning of this comment...you poem takes on a different form and took me to an interesting place. I wasn't quite expecting this and I'm will be reading more of you work. It elevated me. You are fresh.

[Chuba kichu]

Your lines holdr strength. Keep up the good work.

[writing mojo]

I always think of the title "Death of a Salesman", as death being the salesman, I don't know why, but those vacuums really suck! The guarantees are always on the voided end when one tries to dig in deep and crack it to open up with force ,,,but that's what do you do on a Sunday afternoon when the room stinks to high heaven, when your too low on the incoming line to summon a maid to the rescue.. You look inside for the baggage to check to see if there's to much to much to handle, or if the proper channels are taking too much gunk in...then, you get down on your hands and knees and make sure those wheels are still properly spinning, unclog the filter and get that s**t out before it breaks down your whole self containable system, which with enough time and distress disrupts the entire home circuitry..thank you dana for being honest with such a surface you're never inclined enough to sweep under the rug.. excellent piece

[CLBombay]

I like this. The message I took was that we try to use other distractions to keep us from the fact that death happens.

[John Destalo]

This is amazing and I can relate. Love the specifics of "Pink in the Afternoon" by Revlon" you do a great job of pulling in very close but then pulling back to see the bigger picture.

[Ed Hart]

'soul clap its hands and sing'

[W.k.kortas]

It's odd that you brought up the Tigers, who are confined in a oh-God-we-have-to-win-before-Illitch-dies construct of their own making. and so we create our buttresses, our lipsticks and our nail polish, as a Maginot Line against our mortality (and you have deftly stated how futile that notion is); this piece calls upon not only Detroit, but Buchenwald and, lastly, Byzantium, the cradle of the eternal struggle between Faith and Reason (I know this is a second-rate review, but if I could really write, I would have written this).

[Ken Simm.]

Full of power and thought.
My ex wife worked in a hospice. I went rather a lot. I knew the patients so perhaps I can feel the true lines through this remarkable verse. but then I know who wrote it and I am pleased and proud I can say that.
As a rather flippant aside my Auntie Mabel used to call the hospice in her best posh English telephone voice. The one she reserved for tradesmen. The Horse piss. Hmmm?