Walking a chair home from the Clark Community Thrift Store
One hypotenuse across
the Saint Peter’s parking lot
was the trip from our apartment
to the thrift store that once
was Monihan’s Pharmacy.
“Have you seen that chair
they have over there?”
My dad swooned on our
trip a few blocks beyond
to Tedeschi’s market
“I’m gonna ask to sit in it.”
Dad oscillates from his couch-
made-bed to a cracked dining
chair to watch the news.
In secondhand socks and shoes,
he skips at the sight of
weighty wooden
slabs for arms (3ft. x 3ft)
sandwiching slightly scratchy cushions,
bistre brown—color of my hair.
Dad’s perfection, kept at bay
“If only I had forty bucks,” he’d say.
“How much do you have?”
Danielle asks.
“I’ll do twenty-five,
if you do fifteen.”
Comfy chair, but more so
comforting to fulfill
Dad’s humble indulgence.
Two teens with summer
jobs and City money.
A flutter from diaphragm
to the back of my nose
when I imagine him in
a tweed-upholstered throne.
“I need a break,”
I sigh to Danielle
and rub blood back into
my throbbing fingers
a few parking spaces
from the sidewalk.
“Twenty bucks and I’ll take
that anywhere you want,”
says a truck driver on Main street.
We wave him off,
pick up our cargo.
“You go girls!” from the woman
who sits at the bus stop, but
never boards. She watches
us shuffle down a mulched slope
and past three doorways.
“For me?” asks my dad
as he helps us labor
down landing stairs
his considerable chair.
*
Two-player Rummy with Mom
A deck split in half
a riffle shuffle
a bridging back together.
Soap opera marathon on
The bureau mounted TV. Mountain
Dew bottle sits on the plastic
tote bucket made side table
to Mom’s king size bed set:
two twin box springs under a
mattress for one.
On her bed, she sits sidesaddle.
I sit on my left ankle. Right leg
dangles, not yet long enough
to touch the rose and cream
rug. Seven cards dealt per person
on Merlot sheets pulled
and tucked taut between
my knee and where she sits
facing me.
Her Five-Star spiral notebook
sits open beside us. She keeps
score between neat lists in
blue ink, strickenthrough to-dos:
Laundromat: Four basketball
jerseys for this week’s game
Family physicals: 3 youngest Thursday,
4 middles Friday.
Food pantry Wednesday:
Request Parmalat milk.
Cash Welfare checks: Stop
by housing authority afterward
*
Originally from Worcester, Massachusetts, Melissa Surrette is currently a PhD student at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) engaging in and researching teacher education. Before that, she earned her Master of Arts in Teaching at Clark University in Worcester, MA. She has contributed chapters to edited volumes such as Qualitative Inquiry in the Present Tense: Writing a New History and in the Demystifying Social Justice Education book series. Melissa has also co-authored a forthcoming article in the “International Review of Qualitative Research”. Melissa is a member of the Poem Works poetry group as well as the Round Table Poetry Workshop.
