I’ll be forever grateful for her commitment to bringing poets like me to publication.
-Kevin Carey, The One Fifteen to Penn Station
Crazy Stuff
I hold your hand while you sleep,
your swollen fingers squeezing mine.
There’s a football game on TV,
orange Syracuse jerseys covered in mud
the way we saw ourselves playing,
rainy days on the side lawn in the fall,
while you watched from the kitchen window.
You wake for a moment and I ask you how you feel,
your eyes fogged and far away,
and I remember what we talked about,
the doctors, my mother, God.
“Do you believe in God?” I asked
“Sure,” you said, like why not or who doesn’t,
and the few days before that when I told you
“I’m sorry for all the crazy stuff, it must have
been hard.”
You clutch my hand
like a frightened, fevered child
holding for a breath that might not return,
and I am reminded of Lucinda Williams,
a Lake Charles country song,
and the angel at your ear
in those long last moments.
0 comments