Gemma Cooper Novack
PROTOCOL
There's an order. Your sister knocks first, rippling the wind chimes
that aren't in your vestibule, inserting
her favorite slow tune into restaurant Muzak. You drink too much wine
and your daughter finds you've slipped
on the parquet after midnight, knees apart.
The pictures are moving on the walls, just a little, before you wake up.
Your husband arrives later, reminding you
he was always shorter. He pores over stock prices
in the papers you think he would
have loved the internet and loving him never was the point.
Your old swimming pool fades, oaks one by one uprooted.
Maybe the women who work for you are replacing the paintings.
These look exactly like your artwork, but they're not the same; it's obvious.
Your first husband passes as fast as he did the first time; it's your education
next, you never could have endured those exams. Papers shudder,
you've collected every word your grandchildren wrote
in your presence, your co-ed days rattle your bed, New York
and the New Deal and smooth ink slipping across paper.
This isn't even your apartment, it just looks the same.
You're not sure how you woke up here.
There's an order. Your mother bothers neither with knocking nor
announcing, calls you
in from beneath brownstone steps. She thinks
your skin's too thin, and she marches in
to sit in all the corners, turning on every radio,
listening to the Mets, vertebral artery cracking at a home run.
From The Saint Ann’s Review, Summer / Fall 2016