Photography © Jennifer Matthews

 

Patience is a Table

Out this window, shirts on the line
wait for wind to fill them.
At this table chairs wait for
the ethereal heft of ghosts.

Summer waits for a ghost
to open a door and enter its sunlight,
waits for John’s ghost to speak
the word pig and see a roast on a tray

brought to a table,
and dig in with a knife and a fork.
Summer waits for the ghosts: James,
Amanda, and Priscilla, to join forces,

to pull out chairs and sit.
Here they are.
James talks of his parents’ candy store,
of quarters dropped into a juke,

bodies dancing, sitting
at the counter nursing vanilla
egg-creams.
Priscilla talks of longing to lie

beside her drummer lover,
hear his heart beat, see his eyes
open in the morning light.
Amanda regrets her worldly ways,

a path of self-destruction
John too once trodded, that led
her to a riverbank,
and the black label of a fifth

of Jack she passed
to a man with a black pompadour,
a fifth she polished off
and hurled into the river.

As the ghosts at the table eat
the afterlife’s pig
and sip the Chardonnay
of forever,

I wait for the ghosts of
four whose faces I remember
to enter the summer
of my numbered years.

 

Peter Mladinic’s most recent book of poems, The Whitestone Bridge is available from Anxiety Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

Poet/Photographer Jennifer Matthews’ poetry has been published in Nepal by Pen Himalaya and locally by the Wilderness Retreat Writers Organization, Midway Journal, The Somerville Times, Ibbetson Street Press and Boston Girl Guide. Jennifer was nominated for a poetry award by the Cambridge Arts Council for her book of poetry Fairy Tales and Misdemeanors. Her songs have been released nationally and internationally and her photography has been used as covers for a number of Ibbetson Street Press poetry books and has been exhibited at The Middle East Restaurant, 1369 Coffeehouses, Sound Bites Restaurant in Somerville and McLean Hospital.