Joe Brooks
This Saturday night,
like every Saturday before,
body bent like a sleet-hit
tree limb, false teeth clinging
hopefully to his shrinking gums,
Joe Brooks sneaks out
of the nursing home to the corner pub.
Blue Suit.
Skinny red Tie.
In need of some nookie,
he brags to his fellow residents.
He yells goodbye
to his half-deaf, half-dead
roomie, who turns up Friends
to the volume of a rock
concert in reply.
The nurses toss back their hair,
giggle. Even Ms Sanders at age
sixty-two feels like a girl next to Sam.
No need to stop him, one whispers.
He always comes back by morning.
Back to his canned peas and carrots,
tellie blending day into night.
No wonder he needs to remember
when he was a stud, a looker.
He brags of his night to the red-head
when she brings him his morning pills,
head too filled with her own dreams to hear.
You'd make a great flapper,
he flirts, his once strong baritone
voice siphoned down to a wheezing whisper.
They laugh again at shift change,
wonder if he still can get it up
or if anyone will still have him,
cash roll regardless.
Afterwards, they stroll out into the cold Boston
night shivering, futures still writ
in the stars above them.
They chatter about hair styles and nail polish,
swing their hips confidently,
never imagining their own teeth
in a glass or that they will one day
become an anachronism, too.
Pris Campbell
©2006
Main Street Rag 2008
Art: Celestial by Claudine Hellmuth, a wonderful collage artist. See more of her
work HERE.
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