Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of 3 collections of poetry including In the Palms of Angels (Press 53, 2011), which won a 2012 Nautilus Silver Award for Poetry and was the Gold Medal winner for poetry in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, 2013 Poet’s Market, The Christian Science Monitor, Verse Daily, Literary Mama, storySouth, JAMA, and many others. Visit her website.
K&W
By Terri Kirby Erickson
While I went to pick up the mail,
a silver-haired man said to his friend
in line at the K&W Cafeteria,
my wife stuck a hammer in the oven,
set on on 400 degrees. She cried when
I took it out, said supper was ruined,
so I put it back until she forgot about
it, which wasn’t long. Let me tell you,
that was one hot hammer, he said,
trying to smile. But his face crumpled,
instead, like a paper napkin in the lap
of somebody who can’t take it, anymore.
If you live in a retirement home as I do, you may be able to nod knowingly, but the words cut too deep, as they would if you stood in the line with him.
this is what poetry is supposed to do – to point you deeper in the middle of the very much observable everyday of life
Sad, powerful, and true.