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Jim Peck

Coffee With Lou

She keeps a tin can

on the kitchen counter

containing the ashes

of her husband Lou.

Every morning

she sits at the table

and stirs a spoonful

into her coffee.

She sips him slow

without sugar or cream.

She loves him hot

and bitter.

Raggedy Anne

She had a scar

on her forehead

in the shape of a T,

a gift from her father

on her 14th birthday,

for stealing the heart

of a teenage boy

which she hid in a box

in the basement.

Her husband was

a shriveled weed,

who lived in a tent

in back of the house,

with a coffee can

of dollar bills,

and the smile of a man

always falling.

She was the mother

of all fuckers,

the devils

bastard bitch,

who drank the wills

of washed up drunks,

mixed with the blood

of Jesus.

She ate onions like apples,

passed gas all the time,

gnawed on the charred

remains of childhood,

and whiskeyed  her water

down.

And her life dried up

on a Sunday morning,

9 a.m.,

she was sixty three,

and they carried her out

on a piss stained sheet

with milk white death

in her eyes.

[Index]

Thunder Sandwich #26 - Summer/Fall 2005