Rachel Marie Patterson
High Acres Drive
The two-pronged outlets hum
when we touch them. I quit trying
to scrub the stains from the white oak floor.
The last woman who lived here
bought bricks and a kitchen, planted
a garden, then became a widow.
We spend our first spring mowing
dead-nettles along the rusted gate.
I line three amber bottles above
the sink where you won’t forget―
aspirin for your blood, iron for your gut,
and the daily capsule that slows
your heart. We should fix the steel
windows, caulk the tile, have a baby.
First, scrape the old name off the mailbox.
Isidore
My grandfather sucks water from a sponge
and throws his hearing aid toward a plastic
wash-basin. He picks a hole in the flannel
blanket and whispers
Florence
while the nurse suctions his nose with a tube.
Last night, my husband dreamt of his own
father bleeding in the narrow room of his skull,
field jacket with a peace sign.
Love is the solitary thing,
one black tree in a hallway of snow.
Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her work appears in Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, New Plains Review, Forklift, Ohio, The Journal, Parcel Magazine, Smartish Pace, and other journals. The winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, her poems have also been nominated for Best New Poets, the Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net. Visit her site here: www.rachelmariepatterson.com.
Return to November 2017 Edition
The two-pronged outlets hum
when we touch them. I quit trying
to scrub the stains from the white oak floor.
The last woman who lived here
bought bricks and a kitchen, planted
a garden, then became a widow.
We spend our first spring mowing
dead-nettles along the rusted gate.
I line three amber bottles above
the sink where you won’t forget―
aspirin for your blood, iron for your gut,
and the daily capsule that slows
your heart. We should fix the steel
windows, caulk the tile, have a baby.
First, scrape the old name off the mailbox.
Isidore
My grandfather sucks water from a sponge
and throws his hearing aid toward a plastic
wash-basin. He picks a hole in the flannel
blanket and whispers
Florence
while the nurse suctions his nose with a tube.
Last night, my husband dreamt of his own
father bleeding in the narrow room of his skull,
field jacket with a peace sign.
Love is the solitary thing,
one black tree in a hallway of snow.
Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her work appears in Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, New Plains Review, Forklift, Ohio, The Journal, Parcel Magazine, Smartish Pace, and other journals. The winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, her poems have also been nominated for Best New Poets, the Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net. Visit her site here: www.rachelmariepatterson.com.
Return to November 2017 Edition