Last Gesture
The wind was already blowing hard
Bending everything acrobatically
Giving the junipers a new right to dance
Zero-gravity lounge chairs empty now
Filled when he was here last
With the weight of his healthy body
Everyone looking toward the stars
The Milky Way showing up
For the first time because we saw it
Cause and effect, captured
In the same diaphanous movie
We’re watching now
As the wind picks off the third chair
The one he sat in
And throws it to the ground.
The Hearse in Retirement
You rest at the end of a quiet block
In sunny Arizona
White as a word before speech
The sign says FOR SALE but
No one can own you now
You are so done with funerals
You are ready to do your own sweet work
Roam about, low center of gravity
Carting you in a stately way
Through the desert, up the mountain
To release your natural camper
In the loading bay counting the stars.
Maybe you’ll take up a hobby
Photography, or astronomy, perhaps
Laying tripods and telescopes out carefully
In the back of yourself like bodies of light
Take your rebuilt Corvette heart
And pump around some green field
Play a round of golf
Roll down to Baja, pick up some surfer
Who admires your lines and
Waxes you down like a board.
You’ll find your 1960’s ambulance friends
Sitting on a corner playing cards
You’ll mock their uselessness
How they showed up the hero of every heart attack
Then did nothing for the stricken but drive
You, of course, were always the hero of the
Saddest day in someone’s life
One hundred eleven thousand three hundred
Miles of sorrow
It’s time to take your well-earned ride
Add a few convivial miles before
Dusting off your sleek white suit
And, like the best of us,
Rise.
Dear Microsoft Word
I hate your editor. I’d shoot him but he wouldn’t bleed. I’d choke him but he’d still prattle on with useless advice, missing the subtleties of language. Even if he has nothing to say (spelling and grammar ok!) he hangs around to the right of my screen, waiting brightly. I cried on his shoulder once at 2 a.m. Spilled out the pain, related everything in great detail. He told me to be more concise. And to resolve the disagreement within the noun phrase. But at least he was there. Cybernetically, irrationally, steadfastly in the breeze until I closed the window.
Michele Rappoport enjoys the small life. She lives part-time in an RV, creates small art, writes poetry and other short pieces, and has a certification in small-animal massage. Her short work has been published in High Desert Journal and Literary Orphans. She is 5’3” and shrinking.
–Art by Dom Crossley — Artist Profile
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