I’ve held in the death of you since you died.
When it came, you were probably
laid out like this: In a hospital bed, your head
in your husband’s lap, blouse not cut off
because there was no need to even try to save you.
I’ve held in the death of you and the way your blood
had to be ignored because there was even more bad news.
Ignored, because you had begun to press toward
the place where life isn’t anymore. I’ve held it in
until now. And I don’t want to cloud your memory,
but I don’t think I would by telling
you? this poem? the fucking cat?
I held in your death until late last night
when I was on my father’s porch. There was a kitten
following a man in a green trench coat.
He asked if the kitten was mine, and I said no.
He picked it up, and said the kitten was his then.
Things like this don’t happen, do they?
Maybe I should ask your headstone. Or maybe
I should ask your tooth that is lost on the highway,
between Reliance and White River, South Dakota.
Timothy Black’s first poetic novella, Connecticut Shade, is in its second printing through WSC Press. He teaches poetry at Wayne State College, and is a Cave Canem Fellow. He lives in Wakefield, Nebraska with his wife and two sons.
Timothy’s work has appeared in the anthologies The Logan House Anthology of 21st Century American Poetry, The Great American Roadshow, and Words Like Rain. He has been published in The Platte Valley Review and at bringtheink.com, and has won an Academy of American Poets prize for his poem "Heavy Freight."