Creak
Much as I long for the remembered real
I dwell more now on memories that never were.
Instead of your body beside me
there is only the creak in my bones
to quicken my breath,
distant cousin to the worn floorboards
under our weight as we snuck past
your parents’ room.
Chef’s Special
“I’ll have the Alzheimer’s,” she said.
“Would I like a side?”
She took a stealthy selfie
beneath the tablecloth.
“They only have thigh-high wi-fi here,” she said.
“Where’s our waitress?”
When it arrived, she swept it to the ground.
“I didn’t order this.”
Time Travelers
You can tell the other time travelers
by the hobbit in their step. No one warns you
how much you will miss evenly spread asphalt.
Ironic that that those of us who love the curves
of the Earth want nothing more than to make it
flatter and more convenient to tread carelessly on.
Newbies give themselves away, craning their necks
in search of absent power lines, vapor trails,
and streetlights in the fast-approaching dark.
The natives have seen it all before. They
roll their eyes and exchange clicks and whistles,
which seem to say, roughly translated,
that God is good but stupid is eternal.
Some of us have prospered. One fellow
invented whiskey, another firearms. If I had any brains
I would have put playing cards in my pocket or a pair of dice,
started a casino, and invented cheating at solitaire.
Green Dot
The green dot tells me which of my friends
is online. Probably the app is open only
on their phones and they can’t see my gaslight.
When I sign on to see if anyone new wants
to friend me (they don’t), my dead mother
(minus green dot) sometimes stares back at me.
Two dead mothers, rather, her original account,
hacked and replaced (is one an evil twin who died beside her?)
but Facebook forgets nothing so it keeps both alive.
She may disappear for weeks from my grief
(and my concern for the still breathing)
and then exhume herself for my attention.
Maybe Facebook knows something I don’t.
Maybe Microsoft, among its other gifts,
hosts a kind of purgatory, or maybe AI is busy
mining public records so one day ancestors
too old for living memory and ignorant of the internet
will resurrect and greet me with their green dots.
To delete a profile, you only have to prove
who you are (like I would know), that you have a legal
right, and that she’s dead, but Facebook
doesn’t make it easy. Two years on
and she’s still there, both of her.
I may try again next year.
Upon Reading that Delmore Schwartz Was Arrested for Trashing His Hotel Room after the Poetry
Festival (1962)
Strip away the skin-deep mask
of model citizen, bookish, professorial,
and we’re all fugitives, not
only the usual suspects — Byron, Shelley,
Poe, alcohol and opium. Under the lacy verse
your granny spins about dogs and dogwoods
are strategically hidden tattoos, unlaced leather,
and a mouth raw with insane song:
What makes your kingdom come?
What makes your queenie cream?
You cannot trust us in plush rooms
with rivals, scotch, sharp objects,
or publisher’s wives. While you forged
belts for chastity and locks for Houdini
we invented great escapes and keys
to keep us uncaged.
*****
Dudley Stone’s poetry is Pushcart Prize-nominated and has recently appeared in Neologism Poetry Journal and The Headlight Review. He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and a proud member of the Kentucky State Poetry Society. Mr. Stone lives in Lexington, KY. See more of his work at dudleystone.com.