Cool coffee, coagulated,
the last few sips before third
shift starts, tasting tobacco
leaves in everything. Three packs
a day, trying to hide her habit
from her mom, whose grandson
smells like he’s the one smoking.
Monotonous factory line,
tobacco bander for down
market brands, not one smoked
to celebrate a marriage
or a new baby, but palliate
middle-class anxiety, cheaper
and easier than barbiturates.
Incumbent shifts of caring
for her bed-dependent mother
despite two hardy brothers.
Twice falling asleep coming
home from work in the morning,
saved by prescient engineers
designing wide grassy medians.
Two-hour bus rides to casinos
filled with oxygen tanks
and wheelchairs. Roll of quarters,
supplemented by what was left
over at the end of the month
from a modest pension and
buying processed foods in bulk.
Was she lucky at the slots,
you ask? Think of Bishop’s poem.
One day receiving a call
from my father, uninflected
voice stating, “Your mother’s dead.”
Scat from birds draped like
a necklace over her headstone
At the edge of a shade tree,
cleaning it off, noticing
the sun’s rays like watch hands
pointing to an hour marker
as if viewed from above.
Time. What if she realized
after visiting departed
loved ones, the slow suicide
of wearing her life to the tread
knowing there were no parts left
to replace, so that her son,
young enough to understand
and do something meaningful
before it suddenly runs out?