Tag: Ann Kammerer

Red Things by Ann Kammerer

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Red Things

Right before
Mom left Dad
and moved out-of-town,
she started buying
all sorts
of red things,
things like
red shoes,
red earrings,
red shirts,
red dresses,
and a single-breasted
red pea coat
with black buttons
trimmed with
zirconia.

Dad asked why
she was getting
so dolled up,
why she was
wearing clothes
meant for
high school girls
like me.

“Never mind,” he said.
“I know why.
You’re catting about.
Aren’t you?”

Mom ignored him.
She fluffed her hair
in the hallway mirror
and put on red lipstick,
color-keyed
with her dress.
Elevated in heels,
she clicked past him
as he watched TV
and drank.

“Answer me.”
Dad grabbed her.
She swatted him
and pulled away.

“Don’t touch me,” she said.
“You know I can’t
stand it.”

They argued.
Dad stomped
to the kitchen
to get more beer.
Mom slipped on
her red coat
and went out,
her bright form a blur
as she passed by
the front window.

“Get back here.”
Dad shouted through
the open door.
The cold air blew in.
Mom revved
her Maverick
and backed
from the drive,
the headlights
glaring in Dad’s face,
making him squint.

“Goddamn it,” he said.
“I’ll find you.”

Dad yanked a sport coat
from the closet
and pulled it over
his untucked oxford.
He stumbled outside
in his rumpled pants,
one foot falling heavy,
the other dragging,
a felt cap set crooked
over his thinning hair.

After they left
and the house
grew quiet,
my little sister Janie
came out
to the living room.
She asked
where Mom was,
but didn’t ask
about Dad.
I told her
they went somewhere,
probably down
to Armando’s
or maybe over
to Monty’s.

“We should probably
go to bed,” I said.
“Before they get back.”

Janie sat down.
She covered her lap
with a dirty afghan
that Mom had knit
with red and white
acrylic yarn.

“I want to watch
The Waltons,” she said.
“We always do.
Me and Mom.
On Thursdays.”

I said OK,
we could do that.
Kneeling,
I flipped through
the channels,
landing on
the opening credits,
Janie telling me
to stop.

“There, there.”
Leaning forward,
Janie hummed
the theme song,
clapping out the waltz
of Appalachian rhythm,
the tiny screen filling
with a gabled house,
then John Boy
in a second-floor
window,
his father pulling up
in a flat-bed truck,
his mother
standing serenely
on the porch,
as a cluster of children
in overalls and gingham
bounded barefoot
across grass and pebbles,
a fawn-colored hound
not far behind.

*

Ann Kammerer lives in the Chicago area, and is a native of Michigan. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Fictive Dream, ONE ART, Open Arts Forum, Bright Flash Literary Review, Chiron Review, BlazeVOX, The Broken Spine, and elsewhere, and in anthologies by Workers Write!, Querencia Press, and Crow Woods Publishing. Her chapbook collections of narrative poetry include Yesterday’s Playlist (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Beaut (Kelsay Books, 2024), Friends Once There (Impspired, 2024), Someone Else (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and At the Cleaners (Bottlecap Press, 2025). You can find her here: annkammerer.com

Three Poems by Ann Kammerer

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Robin

We sat around
my kitchen table,
my brothers in town
for Christmas,
Mom and Dad
long divorced
and dead
for decades.

They talked about
high school.
They talked about
sports.
They talked about
being All-Region
in baseball,
and how
they could’ve been
All-State,
if only Mom
had married
someone else.

“We would’ve
been better,” Freddie said.

“Yeah,” Charlie said.
“We would’ve been
All-Stars.”

Charlie drank.
Freddie smoked.
They went
back and forth
calling Mom an idiot
for not marrying
a college player
named Robin Roberts,
a stand-out pitcher
recruited by the Phillies
and enshrined
in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“She dated him you know.”
Charlie leaned in,
his head tipped,
his eyebrows raised
just like Dad
used to do
when he tried
to make a point.

“I doubt it,” I said.
“Like Mom made
things up.
You know.
To get Dad mad.”

Freddie leaned in, too,
his jaw squared.

“She wouldn’t lie
‘bout that.” he said.

Charlie nodded.
He rapped the table
with his knuckles.

“Yeah,” he said.
“She wouldn’t do that.
Never.”

They fixed
on each other,
their eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Freddie said.
“It could’ve been perfect.”

Reseating their baseball caps,
they listed the keepsakes
they found tucked away
in Mom’s dresser drawer,
the college programs
with Roberts’ name underlined,
the ’49 rookie card,
the mint condition
Topps and Bowmans,
and the ‘53 baseball mag,
with “Wonder Boy” Roberts
on the color cover,
sizing up his pitch.

“She had
everything,” Freddie said.
“All his cards,
all those stories,
all those things
about him,
about his kids,
about his wife.”

Freddie paused.
He blinked and looked
out the window.

“Like that could’ve
been us,” Charlie said.
“Imagine it.”

Chugging their beers,
they opened two more,
saying they could’ve had
a star-quality Dad,
someone who taught them
how to throw,
catch, and hit,
someone who
coached them,
instead of a dad
in worn suits
and scuffed wingtips
who never even
tossed them a pitch
when they played ball
with neighbor kids
in a fenced back yard.

*

Curation

Mom needed money.
Dad wouldn’t give
her any.
He said she spent
whatever she got
on stupid things
instead of what
she should.

Her friend Charlotte
told her to have
a garage sale.
She said Mom
would be surprised
at how much money
she could make.

“People like to buy
other people’s junk,” she said.
“I’m sure your husband
has a lot of it.”

Mom emptied cupboards
and rummaged through
dresser drawers.
She pillaged closets
and dug deep
into crannies
and crawl spaces.
She gathered anything
deemed useless
or useful,
not caring
whose it was,
just as long
as it would sell.

“No one’s gonna miss
this stuff,” she said.
“Especially your brothers.”

Freddie and Charlie
had moved out
the summer I finished
seventh grade,
getting an apartment
and taking college classes,
vying to avoid
the Vietnam draft.
They left stuff behind,
their closets jammed,
saying they’d come get things,
as soon as they were ready.

“If they wanted
this crap so bad
they would’ve taken it,” Mom said.
“Finders Keepers, right?”

We cleared their closets
and set things on
the scuffed plank floor,
creating a line-up
of boxes and bags.

Mom split the tape
and opened
a small cardboard box
labeled “CHARLIE’S CARDS.”

“Well looky here.”
Her eyes reflected
a colorful collection
of rectangular cards,
the ones paid for
with nickels and dimes,
originally packaged
with a stale stick
of pink powdery gum.

“I betcha there’s
a Mickey Mantle
in here,” Mom said.
“Or a Willie Mays.”

She held up each card,
looking for bends
or worn edges,
making stacks
of MVPs,
sluggers,
and pitchers,
a few catchers
in between.
Lopsided frowns
crossed her face
as she discarded
dispelled prospects
and hopefuls
in a jumbled pile.

“Help me,” she said.
“Let’s see
what we got.”

I set down my Coke
and stood beside her,
a light breeze
carrying the roar
of the distant highway.
Our fingers nimble,
our eyes fixed,
we worked in sync,
silently sorting
the cardboard portraits,
a curated gallery
of young men
in pinstripes
and ball caps,
poised on green fields
against the bluest of skies.

*

Rookie

My brother Charlie
got fired from his sales job
after getting too drunk
at a Christmas party
and spouting off.

“My boss had it
in for me,” he said.
“Everyone says
it’s bullshit.”

Charlie sat around
for a month.
He went to bars
and sat around
some more.
He got drunk
and called me
all the time,
ranting about
his ex-wife,
ranting about
some college girl
he picked up,
calling her a slut.

“I don’t want
to hear it,” I said.

Charlie got foul mouthed.
I hung up.
He called back.

“Hey.
Listen to me,” he said.
You’re supposed
to be my sister.”

I hung up again.
He kept calling back.
I turned off the phone.

Six months later,
Charlie ran out
of money,
his prospects dry,
his savings thin.
His phone got
disconnected
so I went by his house,
the lawn overgrown,
the front door
kicked in.

I found him
in the back room
sunk in a vinyl recliner,
ringed by beer cans,
empty chip bags,
and crusted-over bowls
of beans and franks.

“Why you here?”
Charlie stared
at an ancient TV
coated with dust.
“The Tigers,” he said.
“They’re on.”

A sour smell
hung in the air,
the carpet squishy
beneath my feet.
I pulled over
a folding chair
and sat for a minute
on the torn sticky seat,
asking how he was.

He lifted his filthy ball cap
and smoothed his
gray-blonde hair,
his skin sallow
with tungsten light.

“Doing good,” he said.
He dunked his hand
in a Styrofoam cooler
filled with melting ice
and Miller Light.
“You know, though,
I still can’t believe it.”

He looked at me
and shook his head.
I asked him what.

“You know what.”
Charlie slurred,
starting in again
about his baseball cards,
how he could’ve
cashed them in,
been rich,
if only Mom
hadn’t sold them
at that garage sale
years ago
when he was away
at college.

“Man oh man,” he said.
“Mickey Mantle.
Rod Carew.
Hank Aaron.
Plus all those
rookie cards.
Goddamn her.”

Charlie picked
at the cracked vinyl
on the arms of his chair.
He bit his dry lip
and said yepper yep,
once, then twice.

“Goddamn it.”
Rising in his seat,
his eyes blistering,
Charlie threw his beer
as a Tiger struck out,
ending the inning
one run behind,
with two men stranded
on base.

*

Ann Kammerer lives in the Chicago area, having relocated from her home state of Michigan. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared or are coming in Fictive Dream, One Art, Open Arts Forum, Bright Flash Literary Review, Major 7th Magazine, Workers Write!, Chiron Review, Thoughtful Dog, and Ekphrastic Review, and in anthologies by Crow Woods Publishing and Querencia Press. Her chapbook collections of narrative poetry include “Yesterday’s Playlist” (Bottlecap Press, 2023), “Beaut” (Kelsay Books, 2024), “Friends Once There” (Impspired, 2024), and “Someone Else” (Bottlecap Press, 2024). You can find her here: annkammerer.com

Four Poems by Ann Kammerer

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Red Coat

The night I went to find her
she was wearing the red coat,
the one she got
at Burlington Coat Factory
for her 40th class reunion.

“I always wanted a red coat,”
Mom had said.
“They’re so youthful.”

She wore it proudly,
tossing it over pilled sweaters
and filthy sweatpants,
cinching the belt
to accent a waistline
starved by gin
and Percocet.

Now, under streetlamp,
she was vibrant,
the coat ever dazzling.
Seated on a frayed blanket,
wedged between wizened men,
Mom broke through the clutter
of black bags and bottles,
her coat a billboard
amidst cardboard signs.

“Time to go Mom.”
I nudged her peeling flats
and lifted her face
from a man’s nubby shoulder.
Her eyes quivered,
her irises soft pink.

“They need cigarettes.”
She groaned as I pulled her up,
her body a collapse
of boney arms and legs.
“Give them some.”

“I quit,” I said.

She swatted me
with limp paper hands.

“You would,
Wouldn’t you?”

Lowering her into the car,
I drove away,
passing weedy lots,
a Rite-Aid,
then a McDonald’s,
two blocks from a burned-out house.

“I always loved Chicken McNuggets,”
she mumbled,
the glow from the Golden Arches
striping her coat.
“You know I wouldn’t be like this
if your dad had just got me
what I wanted.”

*

Pancakes

Mom was propped up
with pillows
the last day I visited
the hospital.

She was leaning,
her balding head
touching the bed rail.
One leg was covered
with bleached white sheets,
the other bony and extended
with a sock hanging
from the toe.
Clutching a rosary
in her bent lumpy hand,
she stared at the TV,
her mouth gaping
over her brown stubby teeth.

“Put your toys down,” Mom said.
“Get to the table now.”

I set my purse
on the floor
and laid my coat
across the back
of a red vinyl chair.
Stepping to her bedside,
I pulled the sock back
around her crusted heel,
and smoothed the sheet
over her cold, grey legs.
I sat down and slipped off
my work shoes,
the smell of hospital food
from a hallway cart
seeping into her room.

“We’re almost ready
for dinner,” Mom said.
“The frying pan.
It should be
nice and hot.”

Mom dropped her rosary.
She centered her head
on her brittle neck,
her eyes rolling
behind half-closed lids.
Lifting one arm in a semi-circle,
she rotated the other in mid-air,
thin folds of transparent skin
dangling from her underarm.

“We’re having pancakes tonight.”
Her swollen tongue clacked,
elastic bands of spit
forming on the sides
of her mouth.
“Just like every Monday.”

Mom blended batter,
her withered fist spiraling.

“Come on,” she said.
“Set the table now.
We’re almost ready.”

The more she stirred,
the more her hospital gown
slid from one shoulder,
revealing a purple hole
near her breastbone
where nurses dribbled medicine
through plastic tubes.

“Come on,” she said.
“Be a good girl and help.”

I reached over the bed rail,
touching her bony arm.

“Mom.
How’s it going?”

Her arms collapsed
on her distended belly.

“Is that you?”
Her voice warbled
as her cheek pulsed.

“Yes. It’s me Mom.”

Mom looked past me
with glassy yellowed eyes.

“Did you come for dinner?”
Her breath pushed her words
through papery lips.

“Yes,” I said.
You were making pancakes,
weren’t you?”

Mom blinked.
Her head tilted
as if she heard something
faint and far away.

“You like pancakes,
don’t you?”

I stroked a wisp of hair
on her temple.

“Yes.
I love pancakes.”

Mom’s mouth curved,
breaking the stillness
of her face.
Her eyes shuttered
and she began to shake,
her arms fluttering
as her legs
made the sheets
move like ghosts.

*

Candy Counter

I always thought
I’d go to college,
but when the time came,
I didn’t.

After high school,
my only ambitions
were to get an apartment
and do something aside
from selling hotdogs
at a mall kiosk.
Teachers said
I was good at math
and science
and even writing.
Mr. Bonfiglio said
my future was bright.
I didn’t see that,
and figured he was just
trying to get me
to stay after school,
go out to some park,
drink wine,
and run his hands
all over me
like he had
with my friend Mary.

Mom wasn’t big
on jobs or college
and wasn’t much help.
She had gone straight
from high school
to work the candy counter
at a department store.
Dad had worked there, too,
selling appliances.
They double-dated for a while
with a guy from automotive
and a girl from lingerie.
Shortly after they married,
Dad made her quit,
saying no wife of his
was going to sell sweet things
for a living.

“Just work a while,” Mom told me.
“Maybe you’ll be lucky
and meet Mr. Wonderful.
You could quit then,
have a kid.”

I told Mom
that wasn’t my plan,
that I wanted to do more,
that people said
I was smart.

“I’m thinking about
getting a better job,” I said.
“You know, maybe down
at the dry cleaners,
make a little more money,
see if they’ll teach me
how to tailor,
or something like that.”

Mom poured a drink
and sat down
at the kitchen table.
She lit a cigarette
and called me smarty-pants.
Crossing her legs,
she smoothed her bare calf,
kicking off one shoe
to rub her foot.

“Better watch your fanny
if you do that,” Mom said.
“I hear that Rod guy
who runs the place
gets pretty friendly
with counter girls.
Customers, too.”

I took one of her Viceroys
and slumped on the couch
to watch reruns of “Medical Center.”
Chad Everett filled the screen,
the scene cutting
between him and a blonde nurse,
his eyes technicolor blue,
his bangs gelled
in a perfect crescent,
his lean body draped
in a white doctor coat.

“Well look at him.”
Mom drew on her cigarette,
her lipstick ringing the filter.
She recrossed her legs
and ran her fingertips
over her other calf.
“He can take my pulse any day.”

*

Fugue

A cloud of swearing
seeped into my room
a few hours after
I went to bed.
Dad had missed dinner,
never calling,
coming home late,
making Mom mad,
both of them drunk,
Dad throwing things
and punching walls,
making her yell
and break things, too.

Their shouts rose
in vicious rhapsody,
fading in somber fugue.
Falling asleep,
I woke to the lapping
of curtains on the sill,
a slice of pink sun
spilling on the sheets.

The morning was still,
the living room
strewn with bottles
and upended chairs.
The TV was on,
Phil Donahue
caressing a mic,
immersed in a sea
of middle-aged women
in double knits
and stretch floral shirts,
their necklines bridled
with ascots.

I stood and watched,
drinking warm Coke
and eating cereal from the box.
The sink was jammed
with crusted-over plates,
so I loaded the dishwasher
then got ready
for my 10 o’clock shift
at the dry cleaners.

Walking to work,
I tried not to think
about where Dad went
most nights,
or why Mom didn’t
call her friend Ruth Ann
like she used to.
She was happier then,
or maybe I was littler,
not understanding their exchanges
over Jim Beam and cigarettes,
bemoaning how men
could slip around
and they couldn’t,
that it just wasn’t fair
that they caught a raw deal.

“Men,” Mom would say.
“They’re either obsessed
or they’re womanizers.”

She took a drink
and slammed her glass.

“Well how about this?”
Ruth Ann slapped the table.
“You could just shorten it,
say ‘All men are obsessed.’
That ‘bout says it.”

They’d laugh and smirk
and clink their glasses.
I’d laugh, too,
jumping and twirling,
half-repeating their words,
mom grabbing my ponytail,
telling me to go play.

“Quit listening,” she’d say.
“Go away. Be a good girl.”

When I got to the cleaners,
my boss Rod
was at the front counter,
leaning close and talking
to an olive-skinned woman
in a filigreed dress.
His mom Ruby
was there, too,
finishing up orders,
getting ready to go
for the day.

“Good morning.”
Rod stood up straight.
So did the woman.
Ruby peered over her glasses
as she ran a tape
on the calculator.

“This is Mrs. Carras.”
Rod gazed at Mrs. Carras
but talked to me.
“She’s, well, one of our regulars.”

Mrs. Carras held out
her slim hand,
her rings sparkling
with fluorescent light.

“Are you Rod’s new girl?”
Her sleek red lips broke a smile.
“You’re Millie and Frank’s
daughter, right?”

I said yes.
She squeezed my forearm,
her touch silky,
her eyes traveling
up the center of my blouse,
descending to the hemline
of my skirt.

“You’re a perfect doll.”
Her fingertips lingered
as she pulled her hand away.
“I’m sure we’ll talk more
someday.”

*

Ann Kammerer lives in Oak Park, Illinois, having relocated from her home state of Michigan with her husband and daughter. Her work has appeared in Fictive Dream, ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, Open Arts Forum, Bright Flash Literary Review, Thoughtful Dog, The Ekphrastic Review, and anthologies by Crow Woods Publishing and Querencia Press. She has received top honors and made the short list in several writing contests. Her chapbook collections of narrative poetry include “Yesterday’s Playlist” (Bottlecap Press 2023), “Beaut” (forthcoming 2024 from Kelsay Books), and “Friends Once There (forthcoming 2024 from Impspired).

Four Poems by Ann Kammerer

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Blackbird

Whenever Dad left
Mom sang,
sometimes in the kitchen,
sometimes in the living room,
sometimes outside hanging clothes,
anywhere,
anytime,
only when
he was gone.

Me and Janie joined in,
her teaching us songs and rhythms,
teaching us how to sing in parts.

“You’re just like those kids
in ‘The Sound of Music,’” she said.
“And I’m like Julie Andrews.”

Clad in a frilled apron,
Mom conducted
with a wooden spoon.
She tapped the dinette table,
waiting for us
to stand up straight,
then held her arms
angled and high,
pointing from me to Janie,
telling us when
to come in.

“You then you.”
She whispered lyrics
that slid across our tongues,
strange, lilting, and messy,
making spit bubble
on Janie’s lips.

“Frer-a-shau-ka,
Frer-a-shau-ka,” she sang.
“Door-may-voo.
Door-may voo.”

We scampered in verse,
singing something about
“son-na-may-na TINA,”
Janie clapping her hands,
shouting “where’s Tina?”
looking around for the little girl
who jumped rope in the alley,
wanting to play.

“That’s a French song,” Mom said,
saying it was about church bells,
big pretty ones
that woke up little girls,
just like the bells
on the Catholic church
down the street,
the ones that rang Sundays
commanding us to
don eyelet dresses,
cover our hair with veils,
and clutch change purses
filled with dimes
to give to usher boys
passing baskets
at the end of mass.

“Go play now.”
Mom glanced at the clock
nearing 4 p.m.,
returning her makeshift wand
to the silverware drawer.
“Your Dad’ll be home soon.
He’ll want dinner.”

We dashed out the screen door
and into the backyard,
me still singing,
Janie looking for Tina
through the rusted
chain-link fence.

“Tina, Tina,” Janie cried.
“Son-na-may-na Tina.”

I bounced a red ball
then stopped,
seeing Mom through
the back window,
pouring an amber drink
as she absently sang.

“Pack up all my cares and woe,”
here I go,
winging low,
bye, bye, blackbird.”

Her voice floated then broke,
mixing with Janie’s.
Picking up a piece
of sidewalk chalk,
I redrew my picture
of sun, flowers, and trees
Dad had swept away.

*

Jaywalking

When Mike left
and didn’t come home all weekend,
I jaywalked across the highway
to a neighborhood
with wood-sided ranches
and chain-link fences
dividing the lawns.

Girls in flared jeans
and sheer paisley shirts
stepped out in platform shoes,
their long parted hair
washed with twilight.
Guys in vinyl jackets
idled in Novas or Cutlasses,
peeling from blacktop drives
as girls hopped in.

I lit a cigarette
and stood on a curb,
transfixed by the glow
of Tiffany lamps
and console TVs
through picture windows.
A few women saw me,
their lipsticked mouths
skewed tight,
waving for husbands
to rise from La-Z-Boys
and close the drapes.

I crossed back to the trailer park
stopping first at the party store
for a six-pack
and Marlboro Lights.
George, the owner,
looked over his glasses,
asking about my man,
saying a girl like me
shouldn’t be out alone.

“Did he leave you with that?”
He touched his papery cheek,
then pointed to my black eye.

“No, no.”
I pulled up my hood
and dug for bills.
“I got hit.
By the door, I mean.
Last night.
When he swung it open.”

George muttered and rang me up.
He broke a roll of quarters
on the register drawer.

“What door?” he said.
“Your man.
He’s useless.”

I cracked a Busch
in the parking lot,
stepping through shadows
to my single-wide.
The silhouette of
the next-door neighbor
floated behind yellowed curtains,
his window tossing light
on my dark trailer.

I caught the tail end
of “All in the Family,”
then changed the channel
to a TV Movie about a boxer
with an Italian name.
I drank and smoked,
watching him duck
and weave,
his face swollen,
getting knocked down
and getting back up,
the bell ringing
before the network cut
to a commercial break.

My cheek throbbed
so I closed my eyes,
holding a cool can
to the bruise.
I took cold medicine
to help me sleep,
setting an alarm for 8 a.m.,
just in time to call in sick
to my job.

Curling on the sofa,
I drifted,
soothed by the murmur of TV.
I thought of my mom
and wondered where she was,
if she was still with the man
who rubbed my leg
and said not to tell,
trying not to think
of how she left me
for booze and pills,
remembering instead
how she held me
when I was little,
stroking my hair,
saying to be good
and not to be bad,
saying maybe then
she could love me
like other mommies did
with their girls.

*

Burnouts

Mom didn’t look for a job
for a few months.
She said she was too busy
to pound the pavement,
that she needed time
to unpack,
to get used to a new place,
and to get Janie situated
mopping floors
and wiping down tables
at Wendy’s.

“It’s exhausting,” she said.
“For both me and her.”

She and my sister
had moved to Battle Creek
after leaving Dad,
renting an apartment
in old military housing
not far from where
she grew up.
Post and Kellogg
were a few miles north
and over a hill,
the smoke from the factories
leaving skinny plumes
that changed from
gray to pink to orange
at sunset.

Her friend’s daughter
and a few guys
had moved her things,
loading up a caravan
of rusted pickups and vans,
doing something, Mom said,
I would never do.

“Shelley,” she said.
“She’s like my daughter.
And I’m like the mom
she wished she could have.”

Mom never called me
but Janie did,
mostly to ask
about girls from high school.
We’d joke a bit
about Friday night dances,
how “burn-outs” and “jocks”
never mixed,
and how our friend Scotty
always wore a poncho
and passed out
from too much tequila,
his long blonde hair
a mess of knotted tinsel.

“Yeah. Scotty,” she said.
“Scotty.
Like yeah. Scotty.”

Janie said his name
over and over.
She giggled and whispered
the way she always did
when she didn’t want Mom
to hear.
She talked endlessly
about the burnout kids,
the ones who took her along
when they skipped class,
giving her cigarettes
and sips of beer,
sometimes a nose hit,
but not microdot,
never making fun
of her stiff crooked walk
or her slow speech
and semi-crossed eyes.
Scotty even called her pretty,
asking her to slow dance
to “Stairway to Heaven”
beneath the colored lights.

“Yeah. Scotty.” I’d say
We’d talk a bit more
before I asked about Mom,
if she had a job yet,
Janie saying she didn’t know.

“Maybe ask Shelley,” she said.
“She’d know.”
Janie went on then
about Cindy and Debbie
and Patty and Angie,
about girls
in gauzy shirts
and bell bottoms
that dragged along the ground.

“Yeah,” I said.
“I remember them.
They were fun.”

We talked about
their boyfriends, too,
the Marks and Gregs
and Steves and Dougs,
the guys in leather jackets
and headbands
and open-neck shirts,
beads dangling
on their hairless chests.

“Yeah, yeah,” she tittered,
me lighting a cigarette,
thinking about
my old boyfriend Tim,
the one who blasted Hendrix
and took me to cul-de-sacs,
saying life was just a joke
when his pupils swelled
from acid,
making me wish
I was with Dave,
a quiet guy in wire rims
who listened to
the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band,
gave me cut zinnias,
and liked laying in the grass
to look at clouds
while we passed a joint
between us.

*

But Beautiful

One stands,
one sits,
another close by,
catching the shade
of a half-dead tree.

“You’re beautiful,” the standing man says.
He claps his hands
and tips a greasy ball cap,
his face smeared
with Hershey’s chocolate.

“Be quiet,” the sitting man says.
“No one wants to hear you.”
Squaring his pork-pie hat,
he leans into his cane,
his tarnished cufflinks
illuminating the sleeves
of a pinstriped shirt.

“All you. Shut up.”
A woman peers
from sunspots,
her hair curled,
her face cracked porcelain.
“Let her decide.”
She lifts her hand,
a brittle wafer,
nearly toppling
as she slaps
the standing man’s rear.

“Thank you,” I say,
“but I don’t mind.”

“You will,” she says,
her voice a rasp,
her eyes wide,
as I squint
into the blaze.

*

Ann Kammerer lives in Oak Park, Illinois, having relocated from her home state of Michigan. Her work has appeared in The Thoughtful Dog, Open Arts Forum, The Ekphrastic Review, Fictive Dream, and anthologies by Crow Woods Publishing and Querencia Press. She has received top honors and made the short list in several writing contests. Her debut chapbook of narrative poetry was published in 2023 by Bottlecap Press, with a collection forthcoming in 2024 from Kelsay Books.