The Surprise
My father died two weeks before
his 48th wedding anniversary. What ate up
my mother was the fact that he had
planned a special dinner for it
but never told her details, just a sweet
allusion: It’s a surprise. I must have
called every restaurant in the days
following for proof of reservation,
strange to ask, Do you have record
of a past name?, wondering where
they would have sat, his order, if
acute leukemia would have stopped
him from drinking beer or
pointing to the slabs of beef
wheeled out on a silver cart and
saying, That one. But no one
could find him: not the Peddler
Steakhouse, not the Angus Barn, not
Mandolin. Not even Red Lobster.
What a bureaucratic waste my grief
made of time. I held my breath
whenever a person answered.
*
Easy
I qualify every search with easy.
Easy bean stew. Easy angel food cake.
What is easy to fix. What is healthy.
Easy training techniques for a needy
dog. Easy way to cross grief like a lake.
I qualify every search with easy.
Easy to understand recent study
on the brief fluke prints left in a whale’s wake.
What is easy to fix. What is healthy.
Easy day trips from here. Easy journey
to see varying degrees of light break.
I qualify every search with easy.
Easy slumber. Easy to tell funny
jokes. Easiest way to conceal an ache.
What is easy to fix. What is healthy.
Easy upward trajectory. Dressy
pretend ease followed by the sharp intake.
I qualify every search with easy.
What is easy to fix. What is healthy.
*
Alicia Rebecca Myers is a poet and essayist who holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU. Her writing has appeared in publications that include Best New Poets, Creative Nonfiction, River Styx, Gulf Coast, december, Sixth Finch, and The Rumpus. Her chapbook of poems, My Seaborgium (Brain Mill Press, 2016), was winner of the inaugural Mineral Point Chapbook Series. Her first full-length book, Warble, was chosen by former Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as winner of the 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize and will be published in fall ‘25 (Meadowlark Press). She lives with her husband and their nine-year-old in upstate NY.