by Lois Marie Harrod
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| AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News |
It’s been dismal—
the mice began invading my cupboarded coconut flakes
because, said my neighbor Ed, who knows about such things,
it’s so hot outside they come into the cool, and my neighbor Cheryl
started calling me The Mouse Slayer,
because I snapped seven of their hot little necks,
and then a thunderstorm wedged the roof vent flap open,
letting the storm leak onto the toilet where I was sitting,
and a dead squirrel deposited himself in my yard,
and because my dead husband can no longer do it,
I had to shovel the desiccated little rodent into a garbage bag
because the ground is too dry to dig a proper grave,
and then the spin switch on my forty-seven-year-old washing machine
gave up like democracy, and I had to wring out the bath towels,
hand by arthritic hand, and scoop out gallons of water with a measuring cup.
Next I had to go off to The Home Depot where I spent more than I hoped
on a new ecologically-friendly washing machine,
and when the bearded salesman gave me the receipt,
he said, And what do you think of what’s going on in this world?
Who are you voting for?
And, yes, I was afraid to answer. I knew what was coming . . .
but I said Kamala anyway, because what could this 6-foot bearded guy
in an orange apron do to a less than 5-foot customer in The Home Depot?
Shoot me?
But his beard spread into a grin, and he said Good,
and spent another 27 minutes telling me about his grandfather,
a holocaust survivor, and his uncle who saved 19 people at Pearl Harbor,
and how Hitler came into power and just how would-be dictators
are still coming into power—all of which I knew—but he needed me to listen.
And, yes, as I left, Emily Dickinson’s Hope,
that little thing with feathers, flitted down the paint aisle—
but Emily, are you listening from your grave?—
you are wrong, that little bird does demand a crumb from us,
many crumbs from us.
We must feed her.
Lois Marie Harrod’s recent publications include her 18th poetry collection Spat (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and her chapbook Woman (Blue Lyra, 2020). Dodge poet, life-long educator and writer, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3.
