by Norman Klein
My worst nightmare, JG’s
visiting her sick mother,
leaving me nothing but
her white elephant
to keep me company.
Last night there he was alive,
sitting in her chair, eating her
pretzels, smoking her smokes,
turning sullen and telling me,
his life is flat out misery.
He watches me burn spaghetti
in a pot, spill napkins on the floor,
and after sampling a meatball
gets down on his front knees
and asks me to marry him.
The next morning the second
she came through the door I told
JG everything he did and said,
and she put her hand on my knee
and said, “I missed you too.”
Norman Klein has an Iowa MFA in a drawer that will soon spill over and become a book.
Just so sweet!
This poem is rich with the elements of delight: Surprise and the sense following that what was said was necessary and inevitable. And rarest of all, wit!