Richard Krawiec
(USA)
It’s Like
when my uncle first teased us
with hints of Alzheimer’s,
the frozen stare, lips moving
soundlessly searching for words
he could no longer retrieve.
The way he’d start to tell a joke,
glassy blue eyes agleam once
more until halfway through
he’d forget the set up,
the punch line a fleck
on the graying horizon.
It’s that kind of wordlessness
when you leave me.
Temporary Stay
Outside the inn’s window
the tube of the bird feeder
flanked by TV satellite dish
and camelia bush, pink petals
shucked to the ground.
Inside, precious
painting of a hummingbird
in mid-seek, never reaching
the mimosa. A mantel
timepiece that doesn’t stop.
I want to think
the clock ticking
speaks for someone else,
it’s not my house, after all,
just temporary, a stay,
like all stays, a passing
through what we never,
not really, own,
though we might
call it ‘ours’.
The forward click,
irony of diminishment;
the bird unable
to reach what it seeks;
gray mouth of the dish,
awaiting signals
from the ever-present,
unseen gaseous-sphere.
Does the bush regret
shaking off its blossoms?
Or the cardinals and blackbirds
tire of fighting for all
that passes
through them?
Changing Diapers
A mother stretches her child on cold bricks
between two lines of rails under gray skies
to change her diaper while some man snaps
a photo with his phone. Behind them
black-jacketed policemen stand in a blur of No
to keep the others off the tracks.
At another border, a woman places her infant
on a scatter of prickly straw beneath a thin patch
of shade cast by one small tree in a landscape
of heat-white skies. Her back is turned away from
the dog, bloated by death, lying atop a scatter
of empty water bottles.
On a rain-damp crinkle of Fall leaves,
a mother takes her last diaper, washed
in a puddle, wrung out as best as two
hands can twist moisture from cloth.
Her baby’s skin, bomb-flare red,
is cratered with ulcers. She must
coo to choke her crying as she wraps,
gently as possible, her child’s inflamed skin
with this slap of dampness, necessary torture
to allow them to join the human train again.
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BIO
Richard Krawiec has published three books of poetry, most recently Women Who Loved me Despite, Second Edition (Sable Books). His most recent publication is the novel Vulnerables, published by Editions Tusitala in Paris. His poetry and prose appear in dozens of literary magazines, including New Orleans Review, Drunken Boat, Shenandoah, sou’wester, Dublin Review, Connotations, etc. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council(twice), and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net multiple times, and been on the short list for Best American Short Stories. He is founder of Jacar Press, a Community Active publishing company that publishes full-length collections, chapbooks, anthologies and an award-winning online magazine One: http://one.jacarpress.com/. He has worked extensively with people in homeless shelters, women’s shelters, prisons, literacy classes, and community sites, teaching writing.