I stand by her bedside a dutiful son pretending to care
hate every second of this torturous charade Get me
outta here I want to scream
Agitated you stare up at strangers It’s me Ma Stephen
I could just as easily be The Man in the Moon her face
twitches to the beat of brain cells snapping away
It’s unnecessary to touch you I convince myself it would
only frighten but who more you or me moans spill from
adjacent rooms cries of anguish pleas for help
Fumes waft in mealtime puréed gray and orange matter
pabulum piled high on cafeteria-style silver trays served by
white-smocked perpetually harried Filipino orderlies
I gag at the smell Please God get me out of here Die already
I shamefully wish hate myself for being so callous cruel
Is this payback for being such a shitty son
Had a great conversation with your mom the hospice nurse
smiles as if offering sweets to a stubborn petulant child
She can’t talk I curtly rebuke hasn’t in months
It’s a different kind of conversation without expectations
she offers I stiffen like a frozen rope blink away the
invitation to soften But she can’t talk I repeat not willing
to budge even an inch
It’s not your fault the nurse whispers I try not to cry
—Selected for Honorable Mention in the competition for the Steve Kowit Poetry
Prize 2016, and first published in the San Diego Poetry Annual 2016-17
(Garden Oak Press, February 2017); appears here with permissions from both poet and
publisher.
[* Quotation is by the narrator Vanessa in the title story from A Bird in the
House, by Margaret Laurence (University of Chicago Press, 1993).]
spent most of his life helping people deal with their emotional well-being. He holds a doctorate in psychology and practiced for many, many years. Now retired, he lives in Carlsbad, California and writes poetry. His poems are anthologized in San Diego Poetry Annual and Magee Park Poets.