I don’t want to be that nurse—
The one who acted like
he was doing us a favor
getting my father an extra pillow.
And I don’t want to be that son—
the one who didn’t have the balls
to make a scene
right there in the emergency room
by pounding his fist on the stainless steel table
and demanding that his dying father
be brought ten pillows if that’s what he wanted.
But if I had to choose
which fool to be,
I’d say the son
because I really don’t want to be that nurse,
who doesn’t give a shit
and sleeps well at night.
—Previously published in Blue Lake Review
is a sixty-eight-year-old retired refrigeration mechanic. Since his retirement in
2007, he has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, won the 2010 A. E. Coppard
Prize for Fiction, and, more recently, won Honorable Mention in the 2011 Allen
Ginsberg Poetry Awards. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paterson
Literary Review, Slipstream, and others. His published books are Along the
Highway and Terminally Human.
For more information, visit his website,
www.barrynorth.org.