days into her dying
I ask him to retell how they met
(dining hall, sandwich)
only then
does she let him go.
Following the firestorm—
the inquisitive and acquisitive,
the claims adjusters, press vans, backhoes and dump trucks
left
and left behind, to find:
sweating Frigidaires and Weber grills,
teacups without cabinets, bed frames in backyards,
ash
and cooling, unspooling, on the corner of a foundation:
a single Linda Ronstadt tape
made her living in performing arts administration and arts philanthropy for many years, and is now an independent consultant with a performing- and visual-arts clientele. She has served as executive director for San Francisco’s long-running musical comedy phenomenon Beach Blanket Babylon, the al fresco California Shakespeare Theater, and the Grammy-winning, all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Blast Furnace, Compass Rose, G.W. Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, The MacGuffin, Alphanumeric (the online feature of NonBinary Review), OmniArts, Poem, The Quotable, River Oak Review, Skive Magazine, Soundings East, Thema, and The Yalobusha Review, as well as in anthologies by Red Claw Press and The Poetry Box.