Tag: housing

Two Poems by Judy Kronenfeld

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

“Senior Living”

Sometimes it seems like a Dantean limbo
of the walking dead—the bent at 90 degrees,
the shaking whose forks trip on the way
to their lips, the halt who shuffle tortoise-pace,
and those whose maladies escape
naming—the tongue rolled upwards
spasmodically filling a mouth,
like pink porridge in a pot
rising over and over to a boil.

Sometimes it feels like
the theater of redemption.

Here, in the crepuscular hour,
where skin gathers
on the face in crepey folds,
hair withers like leaves
revealing bareness underneath,
I rush to carry a new friend’s
laden plate from the buffet
while she Rollators back to our table;
I offer her my water
when the waiter’s late.
Here HELLO! follows Hi!
Everyone greets unknown others
in the halls—like bonded passengers
in the same relentless boat, traversing
the pitch-dark river.

*

Moment, Registered

On a stark strange-to-us
persistently clouded day
in our new still alien
senior home we don’t yet
call home, my husband,
with his sieve memory, and I—
bundled in the “winter clothes”
once kept at the back of our closets
“back home in California”—
hold gloved hands for a short walk.

Just ahead of us on the path,
a chubby gray squirrel
velvet-white of chest sprints
down a brown grassy hill and leaps
into a bare tree, balancing
on a jiggling twig-thin branch.
We both watch, but only I file.

Then the round bundle bounds up
into the air again, springing
from one bouncing spindly limb
to another, as if for the sheer green
glee of it—like a kid on a trampoline—
and my husband claps his hands.

Joy! For the present-minded,
even among the beasts.
If not in my heart
just yet.

*

Judy Kronenfeld’s six full-length books of poetry include If Only There Were Stations of the Air (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024), Groaning and Singing (FutureCycle, 2022), Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017), and Shimmer (WordTech, 2012). Her third chapbook is Oh Memory, You Unlocked Cabinet of Amazements! (Bamboo Dart, 2024). Judy’s poems have appeared in four dozen anthologies and in such journals as Cider Press Review, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Ohio Review, One (Jacar Press), ONE ART, Rattle, Sheila-Na-Gig, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verdad. Her newest book is Apartness: A Memoir in Essays and Poems (Inlandia Institute, 2025). Judy is Lecturer Emerita, Department of Creative Writing, UC Riverside. In another life, she produced scholarship on her English Renaissance loves, George Herbert, John Donne, and Shakespeare, including King Lear and the Naked Truth: Rethinking the Language of Religion and Resistance (Duke UP, 1998).

Two Poems by John S. Eustis

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

The Death Game

A couple of guys at work liked to play the Death Game.
The rules were simple. Whenever someone famous died—
like a musician, actor, or politician—the first person
to hear the news would dial his friend’s cell phone.
As soon as the call was answered, the caller uttered
the name of the deceased, then immediately hung up.

They didn’t keep any kind of score, it was just a way
of showing who was more in touch, or had quicker reflexes.
The news had to be delivered in real time right to the ear.
Leaving a message was not allowed, as there was no way
to determine who was first with the ghoulish news.
Nor was there any conversation beyond the person’s name.

Although the game could easily be adapted to texting,
it just wouldn’t be the same as hearing Death’s human voice.

*

The House We Almost Bought

I drive by it now and then
to remind myself how different
life would be right now if we
had gone through with it.
Tina absolutely wanted to buy
and was willing to bid above
the asking price, but I said no.

Our marriage was in trouble
and purchasing a house would not
have helped the situation. Instead,
it would have simply added the stress
of a huge debt to our already fragile
circumstance. Less than a year later
we were moving into our divorce,
and she was physically moving
to a new apartment. I stayed
in the house we rented, which I
could barely afford at the time.

If we had bought that property,
we would have inevitably had to
sell it and both look for places.
Or worse, I would have ended up
buying her a house. Probably not,
but you can never be too sure.

*

John S. Eustis is a retired librarian living in Virginia with his wife, after a long, quiet federal career. His poetry has appeared in One Art, Atlanta Review, Gargoyle, North Dakota Quarterly, Pirene’s Fountain, Sheila-Na-Gig, Slipstream, & Tar River Poetry.