Beetlebung and Kettlehole--April Poems

Nursing Home

On TV, war heroes, drive-by shootings, an overdose
Jody Arias, mercury in baby food.
News inflated like balloons and popped up just as soon.
“Did the nurse call 9-1-1 and when did the ambulance come?”
“Cabbage here gives me gas…”
The terror of disease, muscles squeaking,
bones skidding, hands gripping wheelchair arms,
offspring staying away, heartaches underplayed,
friendships, fighting, making up, shriveled senses.

All this and a room full of peers, yet Jenna, the woman I am visiting,
cannot focus on anything but crossword puzzles
Her eyes glued to the paper, she elbows me.
“What’s no in German?” I answer “Nein”
She tattoos N-I-N-E on the paper and nods, “It fits!”
In college, she carried signs, joined hands,
was dragged away in protest for mothers of all kinds,
but the mind has left her inside this bureaucratic dismissal
like a ventriloquist’s shattered dummy,

An interruption. “Who wetted the floor?” The glacial silence.
Shame wanders, sharp like acid, from face to face.
I bristle with the current like a maniac, and inside me,
strung-out, stunned, I yearn for flight.


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Prompt: Nein