FreeWrights Peer Review™

Please post your own submission or nomination of another poet's work for the September contest as a reply to this thread. Closes at 8 pm August 28. Thanks.

Claret and Blues

"The bird is a grackle," I tell my
88-year-old mother. "A what?
Never heard of it." Not that I

like the creature: a sleek, sneaky
black bird with a mad bright eye, tail
while flying stuck up like a rudder.

And Mom also denies that claret is
a color. I say, "Claret like the drink?"
"What?" "It's maroon or, er, purplish!"

"Never heard of it." So much more
to forget as dementia takes her over
like Clarence in the butt of Malmsey wine;

Mom's drowning in a vat of inclarity.
And I'm wearing Dad's rose gold signet
ring: "G.G." for "Gordon George"--

a reminder he died thirty years ago
with the cancer bubbling in his lungs--
his old ring bent and broken at the back,

pinching a cinch of skin of my pinky.
His tall bourbon and orange, "leg medicine"
that he'd knock back to drown the pain.

Closed my mother's bank accounts
at the nursing home's insistence;
on the phone to another corporate HQ,

trying to get her qualified for medical
assistance. Reams of bank statements!
And the first application is denied--

what's to happen to her? Thousands
to pay. And she so enjoys the activity-
hour with the mylar palm trees,

plastic cut-outs of Elvis. "Blue Hawaii."
How will I ever pay the bills? Aloha!
Her facility sits south of Loch Raven:

Donna and I on our wedding day in a Rolls
chauffeured round the reservoir, under massive
pines; 40 years before, my family arrived from

the UK: huge gray fish nosed beneath the dam.
Catfish, bottom feeders, corporate clowns.
Deeper depths. What's the answer--to drive

Mom and myself into the deep of Loch Raven?
Yet, how quick would the end be? I gnaw
my lower lip, pour another whisky, drown.

Christopher T. George

Acquired Tastes


If he’s perturbed at all by the drowning
wasp, twirling in week-old dishwater,
or dismayed at the ruin of what’s left

of their ficus—its leaves shriveled and
dropping like question marks on the floor—
he refuses to concede any of it.

His was a talent for beginning; but once
past the shallow bluster of seduction
he found her to be an acquired taste, like

even a single malt Scotch. He’d deny
using the toothbrush she left behind
and claim that photographs of her, and them

together, didn’t upset him, that they were
taken down to mute the walls: he’d never
get used to the colors she chose.

And he’s been too busy to buy new paint,
so the unfaded rectangles still mock
the weakness of his endgame. Resigning

to suffer through her favorite Coltrane,
he sips diluted Scotch and wonders why
one wants to acquire a taste for anything.

Arguments


You should know that in spring a southern oak hammock
is not unlike the northern forest in fall. Breezes pluck
weakened leaves, which tap and patter against branches
and twigs on a whirlybird flight to decay and enrichment.
Why do I tell you this? Because you know there are two
poles on earth, both frozen, and that hurricanes swirl in
the opposite direction in Australia than they do in Florida.
Because there is a north and south, and an east and west,
regardless of where you stand. Because some days we rise,
go separate directions, but always return for a nighttime kiss.

These are our 3 for this month. Was hoping to submitted ninety miles by Bernard, but it has been committed to another forum. Good luck to us and good luck to him for this month.