By Robert Cording
Featured Art: Confusion of Christmas by Julia Thecla
I. Hospice Jumble
The Jumble in the paper too hard for him to read,
my mother suggested we make up our own: Dear,
she said to her husband, your first word is life.
Reduced to words we jumbled, he joked file
it. My brother offered another, mean,
thinking perhaps of his diabetes, a name
like cancer to our family. Then, lamp,
lit at his bedside, and the one palm
visible outside his one windowed room.
My father got them quickly, the last, moor,
said with all the sadness of being far from shore . . .
A grandchild solved that one—horse,
she blurted, noticing that he had left
us for a while. By his bed, my mother felt
his hands and face and eyes. Bob, please,
she said, but he was already asleep,
snoring, not dead. My mother sighed, O God.
My brother, in the spirit still, said dog. Read More