Penance
by Joan Pond

I don”t miss your touch,
your house,
or the mouse you caught in your trap.
It was upside down and dead.
A grey puff of head under a wire.
You complained it ate the cheese,
and you”d have to re-load the trap.
It”s tiny pink hands,
as an aborted child holding on
for dear life.
You simply shucked it out the door.
I left shortly, thereafter,
still mobile.
Feeling somewhat trapped,
in this purgatory or hell.
Why couldn”t I tell you,
I felt just like that mouse?

***

Where To Go
by Joan Pond

How many corporate Rest Rooms must I endure?
Questioning myself;
examining a face in the mirror.
Looking forlorn and asking,
what am I doing here?
I washed my hands,
not wanting to return to my cubby hole.
Surrounded by white tile,
I realized
the devil hadn”t taken my soul.
I”d given it willingly to these companies.
Mutatis, mutandis,
going to and fro.
It was a mutual agreement,
yet I”m forlorn;
not knowing where to go.

***

Left to Their Own Devices
by Joan Pond

Men in her life were like the hamsters
she”d had as a child.
Left too long by a radiator,
they cooked.
Or, as the one she took,
limp,
from his shoe-box house;
he”d given up the ghost
when he couldn”t breathe.
It wasn”t easy remembering to give them
water and rodent feed.
Returning from school,
their bodies as lumps of clay;
where she”d left them in cages
to play with sharp objects.
Leslie would say,
“Men left to their own devices,
were like the hamsters
she”d had as a child.”

***

Zero Hour
I knew the stars by name,
for my father and I
had charted the heavens.
Canis Major and Carina,
Auriga and Centaurus.
Soon,
they would exhaust
their energy,
becoming so dense,
not even light would escape.
They”d collapse under their weight,
and the fate of new stars
would be determined.
Simply,
from an amalgam
of hydrogen and helium.
A new universe
begun,
ad infinitum.

A Graceland Christmas
As Paul held me near,
an artificial tree limb poked me in the back.
Jesus,
I”d be impaled by a pagan symbol
on December twenty-third
and I wouldn”t get to open my gifts.
Then I wondered
if I looked as uncomfortable
as I felt.
My skirt was riding up my legs,
stockings were bunched at my knees.
My blouse was wrinkled
and the limb from the tree
could puncture a lung.
I glanced at our reflection in the window.
Two middle-aged frumps,
clinging to each other.
And as the red lights on the tree flickered,
I knew this would be another blue,
blue,
Christmas.

***