Edge
We’re catching just the edge of the hurricane here
some rain, some wind
and we’ve got a garden now
full of squash flowers and
chickweed and sparrows
and a smooth-backed stone to sit on
and smoke a cigarette
and pretend it’s only ever
the edges of the disasters
that will catch us.
*
In addition to ONE ART, Patricia Russo’s work has appeared in Heimat, Zin Daily, Wild Greens, Eulogy Press, Hex Literary, and Crow and Cross Keys.
Invisible Man
My friend, who wasn’t at the memorial, called me.
“Do you remember that August it rained every day
and Billy spent all his afternoons
making life preservers for our imaginary friends
so they wouldn’t drown?”
I said I did, and she said,
“I think he’s home.
Not his last place, but the other one
that converted garage he painted lemon yellow,
do you know the place I mean?”
I said I did, and she said,
“My car got totaled, so I got to take the bus,
and now I’m walking past it twice a day
and I hear noises inside
like someone bumping into a table
or latching and unlatching a window.
There is a window, in the back wall,
do you remember?”
I said I did. And then I said,
It’s probably the wind
I’m sorry, but that’s what it is
I’ve been past the yellow garage, too
and no one lives there
No one can
They snagged the landlord for illegal conversion.
“That wouldn’t stop Billy and you know it,” she said.
“Not landlords or cops or locked doors
when he wanted to get something
or get something done. You know what I’m saying.”
I said I did, and then I said,
You haven’t seen him, though
because if you had, that would have been
the first thing you told me
“I don’t need to see him to know he’s there,”
she said, “I thought you would understand that.”
I said I did, but she sighed
and muttered something I didn’t hear
and said she’d talk to me later.
But I did understand.
That August of the interminable rain
No one had drowned, imaginary or not
And how do you know
the invisible man isn’t home?
It’s easier to blame the wind.
*
Time and Time Again
You need to keep it bandaged
until a scab forms
then treat it gentle
while the skin underneath
toughens to scar
this may take years
or centuries
or forever
but gentleness
does not have
an expiration date
*
Patricia Russo has had poems in Acropolis Journal, The Turning Leaf Journal, The Twin Bird Review, and Metachrosis Literary.
It Was the Snowbank I Longed For
We lay in the snow, waiting to die
The dog and I
And all I wished for
Was that I’d gotten my glasses fixed when I’d had the chance
This blurriness at the end
Was not in the plan
The dog was fogging up my face with his breath
And barking into my chest
Go home, I said
But instead he picked me up in his slender arms
And put me back into bed
Saying, I remember you shared your canned spaghetti with me
And those dollar store butter cookies
And that I take to be love
So? Indeed, then, does no good deed go unpunished?
Because it is the snowbank I long for
No, he said, Rather, what you lose in the fire
You find in the ashes
Which made no sense to me at all.
Since when do dogs talk? I asked
Oh, it happened the same day
We figured out how to pack snow in a bucket, he said
And set down a freezing metal pail
Next to my pillow, next to my head
So I could smell the new snow
Even though my glasses were broken
And I could not see it.
*
Salad
The pain is in a different place today, she said.
Higher, and less in the middle.
I don’t know what that means.
It’s not better, or worse.
It’s just not the same as yesterday.
I want a salad, she said,
Not looking at me,
Or at the tv.
Crisp, and green,
With oil and vinegar dressing.
And though the days of crispness and greenness
Had long since passed away,
I went into the kitchen
To scrub and slice and toss
The vegetables that we had.
Because I could do that, more or less.
A salad, at least, I could do.
*
Patricia Russo has had stories in Fantasy, The Dark, Clockwork Phoenix, Chizine, Podcastle, among other places, and poems in Not One of Us and Persephone’s Fruit.
