Two Poems by Penelope Moffet

Pirates

I peel a banana, cut it into pieces
I can spear into my mouth on knife-tip
like a pirate, as my boss Max used to say,

laughing as he passed from his bear’s lair
through the outer office. Max is dead two years
and it’s the vernal equinox again. Hummingbirds

chase each other when I walk on ocean bluffs
wild with bush sunflowers – dark chocolate hearts,
banana-colored petals. I like my chocolate dark,

dark as those sunflower hearts, but Max loved
milk chocolate with orange centers.
The sweeter the better, he said.

Lilac blooms of low-growing ceanothus
vibrate with bees. Tiny lizards bask on dirt,
race off. While I breathe warm salty air

a friend stumbles, his head strikes concrete,
he’s taken to the E.R. with a deep gash in his scalp.
Max didn’t know his cancer would return.

People fall apart, even me, bumbling
on painful feet and knees. We’ll come back
not as ourselves but as young and healthy creatures

basking on dirt paths, frisking through the air,
as flowers that make other people think
bananas, chocolate, orange.

*

Keepsake

         For Max Gest

The clock ticks softly
on the shelf below the TV
like a deathwatch beetle.
Late at night I hear it.

Round face full of Roman numerals,
rimmed with gold, set in mahogany,
it graced the law office desk
where I worked a quarter-century

until the boss died.
Huddled in dust,
the timepiece governs nothing
but summons Max,

who often forgot how well
his workers knew their jobs
but would stop lecturing
if I made him laugh.

In the heart of the pandemic
we kept the office going,
each laboring alone
through designated hours.

We spoke only on the phone.
More and more his voice
was wracked with coughing
as the tumors ate his lungs.

His hair grew long.
With a walker and an oxygen tank
he came in nights and weekends,
faithful as the clock that ruled my desk.

Once when I stayed late
and he came early
his smile was radiant,
the skin so taut across his face

it was like listening to a skull:
Every day I wake up
happy I’m still here.
I did not want the clock,

I turned it down three times
but on the last day
as workers came
to haul away boxed files,

donation piles and trash,
I put it in my bag.
It whispers to me
when the world is still.

*

Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022). Her poems have been published and are upcoming in many literary journals, including Calyx, Halfway Down the Stairs, ONE ART, Poemeleon, The Rise Up Review, Sheila-Na-Gig Online and Willawaw Journal. She has been awarded artist residencies at Alderworks Alaska, Dorland Mountain Arts, The Mesa Refuge and the Helen R. Whiteley Center. She lives in Los Angeles and has worked as a freelance journalist, a publicist for non-profits, an editor and a legal secretary.