These chalky walls still echo your presence
and demise, bare as a brimless hat.
The moon is appalled by all this blankness,
spreading its cool tentacles across the stage
where the players have left
to no encore.
The cat drinks its lavender paw,
mewling like a curdled beast,
and the heat, the heat-
I picture you, mummified, arms
crossed over your chest, in the family
mausoleum. They buried you
with your glasses on and a new tie
and new socks
that your widow bought
just for the occasion.
She, among the menagerie of dead-
eyed vagabonds that floated
to your shore like sour apples.
How you despised those immigrants!
And yet you married one.
Selfish miscreant, who exited
this life too soon, leaving behind
this woman and this child.
Why did you have to marry so late
in life, knowing you'd never survive?
and demise, bare as a brimless hat.
The moon is appalled by all this blankness,
spreading its cool tentacles across the stage
where the players have left
to no encore.
The cat drinks its lavender paw,
mewling like a curdled beast,
and the heat, the heat-
I picture you, mummified, arms
crossed over your chest, in the family
mausoleum. They buried you
with your glasses on and a new tie
and new socks
that your widow bought
just for the occasion.
She, among the menagerie of dead-
eyed vagabonds that floated
to your shore like sour apples.
How you despised those immigrants!
And yet you married one.
Selfish miscreant, who exited
this life too soon, leaving behind
this woman and this child.
Why did you have to marry so late
in life, knowing you'd never survive?
About Caroline Misner:
Caroline Misner is a graduate of Sheridan College of Applied Arts & Technology with adiploma in Media Arts Writing. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have
appeared in several journals throughout the USA, Canada and the UK, too
numerous to mention here. She's also had work published in several
anthologies and web zines. Caroline also writes erotica under the pseudonym Cynthia
Lucas and her stories have appeared in several publications and anthologies.
In 2009 she was nominated for the prestigious Writers' Trust/McClelland &
Stewart Journey Anthology Prize as well a Pushcart Prize in 2010. In 2004 her novella received Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. A short story was also a finalist in the same contest. A novel, The Glass Cocoon was a semi-finalist for the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award the following year.
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