A Pair
“Might be hard to fit
those things on your feet
when you’re dead. You better
just wear them all the time
so they don’t have to
put them back on you
when your feet swell up.”
[laughter]
“Katie will just grease up
my feet
and slide them on.”
“Hey Katie, he wants you
to grease up his feet
and bury him
in those cowboy boots.”
[laughter]
“I’m just gonna chop your feet
off and put the boots
over your stumps.”
[laughter]
“Next thing you’ll say
is you’re gonna fill them
with cement.
[laughter]
Where am I going then?
To the river?”
[laughter]
“Hey Katie, make cement
out of his ashes
and fill his boots with it.
Drown him.”
[laughter]
A Spaghetti Dinner
when one gets sick we go
as one to
their spaghetti dinner
at the K of C sudden
line around
the building and $5 each
unexpected renal failure
said the flyer on the door
of the pharmacy
we wish for the agency
to help and the way
into the way is a rill
around ourselves you could stay
clear the decision
to stay clear of the spaghetti
dinner in your name is both
personal and public
histrionic it could
be clear
as at a second wedding
there’s no talk of fate
at a spaghetti dinner they
do not speak
of night’s machinery—the ventilators
and dialysis machines
the role the kidneys play
in the digestion of these morsels
we ladle the matter
down from the buffet the least
we can do
and all
we can charitably eat
CAL FREEMAN is the author of the books Fight Songs, Poolside at the Dearborn Inn, and The Weather of Our Names (forthcoming later this year from Cornerstone Press), as well as the chapbook Yelping the Tegmine. Recent work has appeared in Panoply Zine, Novus, North American Review, Potomac Review, and The Glacier.