‘His To-Do List’, ‘Forever in Service’ & ‘Enough with Wives’

Athena Rowe

His To-Do List

Erstwhile uxor, the once wife,
refuses to pour bitterness cocktails,
despite the many ingredients he left her.
Instead speaking to their son of him
she uses neutral tones, citing his virtues.

She ceaselessly has refused to defame him.
This evening though, after a second bourbon,
she tells true. She has long found her
self-pity bone sweet to suck on and chew.
By her adult son, she spits out the small bone.

“Your father,” she said, “was always going to
do something. Tasks I asked were on his to-do list.
He never refused a request. He’d say he meant to.
So, never tell me you were about to do this or that.”
The young man did not question her new candor.

Forever in Service

Oh great and noble,
generous and gracious,
hoary headed maternal unit,
you are kind and pious.
Why do you always atone?

You do for others ceaselessly.
Forever teaching Sunday school,
always volunteering,
donating pints of blood.
You are compelled to serve others.

Your own mother was severe.
She baked for church sales, only,
She hugged no one older than six.
Her daughters never pleased her
and she never praised them.

You neither resent her nor whine.
You would rather stand in chains
held to an oak than talk to a shrink.
I am not a priest, not that kind of father.
I am only a son, your son.

Yet I absolve you of all sins,
conceded, observed or imagined.
Would that I could press solace palms,
to each temple, performing a mind meld
and freeing you of your need to serve.

I would provide you such peace,
I would sooth you, heal your mind,
cleansing you of imagined guilt.
I don’t work 50-minute hours.
Perhaps my help is acceptable.

Enough with Wives

P.C., old man, how about one hour without
telling me again about your three wives?
All of us know too well you wore each out
having your babies, or trying to make them.

Christola, that was 40 and 60 years long gone.

And don’t even try to point to my many bits
about my girlfriends — not at all the same.
They were recent enough I can still smell
their fragrances on my shirts and sheets.

No, it is you who drill into our ears as we sit
on nail kegs at the co-op by the pot-bellied stove
or chatting captive on rocks with fishing poles.
We are still hearing of your womenfolk.

Can you go an afternoon without reminiscing
on Ruth and Mary and Nancy, the missuses?
Did nothing other than marriage and crops
happen in your long life of sameness?

In our semicircle round the stove, watching
the red glowing teardrop vents, do your best
not to spit tobacco across the room to an opening,
even though you can hit one while I could not.

Please stifle your bull about your Angus bulls
and leave some air for other stories, my tales.
It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day and I can tell timely
about my red-headed Kathy the fabric artist.

I am sure she was Irish and just as sure that she
adored me more than all your wives loved you.

Michael Ball scrambled from daily and weekly papers through business and technical pubs. Born in OK and raised in rural WV and SC, he became more citified in Manhattan and Boston. Now one of the Hyde Park Poets, he has moderate success placing poems including in Progenitor Journal, Griffel, Gateway Review, Havik Anthology, SPLASH!, Reality Break Press, In Parentheses, Kind Writers, Fixed and Free Anthology and Dead Mule School. HeartLink published his Leaving the Party chapbook in 2024.

‘Pillow Dates’, ‘Sidewalk Stamping’ & ‘Yellowed Head’

Janice Kim is a Korean-American writer living in NYC. She takes photos regularly as a practice to keep appreciating the innumerable details every day that otherwise might go unnoticed. She believes that it is all about how you see.

Pillow Dates

Point and laugh, which I deserve.
I depended on my fantasies,
never realizing they could
slip or stride away at will.
Missing misty mistresses
long and frequently visited
at twilight or pre-sleep and
they performed to my script.
I cannot, even in fantasy,
couple with potentialities.
In self-guided pillow visions,
teasing shadows blow away.
Once, always in sight and touch,
love and lust objects are gone.
When intimacies might be fatal
even thoughts scream, “Peril!”
When tipsy, tired or loose, I
directed tiny thrills to play.
Now I cannot override the real
to command performance.
Love and lust become impossible.
Dreamed-of liaisons fade to sheer.
Could-be flings leap quickly
months, perhaps years, away.
The simple-minded joys
of pretend cannot survive plagues.
Where can the joy be if we never
know the next possible when.

Sidewalk Stamping

Pre-dawn in Woodbourne,
a suburb lush of tree and bush
tucked in the crotch on the inner city.
Two of us stand apposed, mom
skunk and I, the armed and the big,
with no intent to go at the other.
Under sodium-vapor streetlight,
my skin was wan Talbots green.
Mom toddled and waddled ahead
of her string of Steiff-worthy kits.
All were fuzzy, two thin white stripes
on each black ball body. Hers was
big as a grapefruit, her offsprings’
the size and shape of apricots.
Often she and I had eyed each other
early as we passed 40 feet apart.
She led her necklace of babies
through my backyard, then
my front yard, and finally crossed
the street as every morning they
shopped for breakfast foods.
That day though, she was bow-legged
at my front gate, caring little that
my car was beyond her raised tail.
Vectors and solid geometry
seemed not to be her forte.
She stamped each front paw in turn
as a warning. We shared a stare.
What devilment dared my stand?
I channeled the striped mom, stamping
(while remembering tomato-juice
baths I rubbed into our howling
Maine coon cat to de-skunk him).
Perhaps it was the dark and quiet,
my relative size or our familiarity.
She went still, then waddled South,
passing, and not gassing, me.
Fortune can in fact favor the bold.

Yellowed Head

McCarthy came with the house,
He long roomed as other seamen.
Dad gave Johnny the townhouse
only if McCarthy could stay put.
Now he walks with two canes.
His days mean sitting in his one room
on the shabby North slope of Beacon Hill.
On the second floor over Hancock Street,
McCarthy smokes cigarettes, often
with a friend who smokes cigarettes.
The never grand, well-past-old house
is deep into its third century
with white door frames inside,
all except to McCarthy’s room.
Nicotine and tars seep and curl around
that door header all the day and night,
painting the once-white a light gold.
Har, golden from Old Gold smoke.
His friend brings cans and airy loaves
and, of course, he brings Old Golds.
McCarthy leaves his room twice a year
— not for Mass (and he has no family).
Rather on St. Patrick’ Day he takes drink.
He climbs a stool for two stouts at The Red
Hat.
Then again he hobbles out on Election Day
— a vote for some Irishman he knows or
knows of.

Michael Ball scrambled from daily and weekly papers through business and technical pubs. Born in OK and raised in rural WV and SC, he became more citified in Manhattan and Boston. As one of the Hyde Park Poets, he has moderate success placing poems in numerous online and print journals and anthologies, and being a feature at several arts centers. HeartLink published his Leaving the Party chapbook in 2024.