At Least Look Out of the Living Room Mirror and Smile or Even Snarl at Me, by Margaret R. Hemme

This midnight blue
with black stripes silence
isn’t you. I still have power,

you know,
to really piss you off. You’d talk

if I drove your ’57 in the snow,

opened
the Indian dollar’s protective case

with a nutcracker
and touched it
then bought cheap candy bars

at Walmart
with the your best Buffalo nickels,
types 1 and 2

or if I charged out in this cold
to dig up all
your Tommy Crocus bulbs. My god

how I cried
when they came up last spring
without you.

Margaret R. Hemme is a retired special education teacher who resides in northeast Ohio. She has recently been mistaken for Patty Duke by the pharmacist at the drive through window at her local drug store. Margaret enjoys reading J.M. Coetzee, Fyodor Dostoysky and Thomas Wolfe. Her hobbies include collecting and restoring Singer Featherweights and gourmet cooking. The small town she resides in with her Golden Retriever is currently building the smallest covered bridge in the United States.

© 2010, Margaret R. Hemme