"Peter Cashorali is a queer therapist formerly working in HIV/AIDS and community mental health, currently in private practice in Portland and Los Angeles."
Cleaning My Mother’s Apartment
Cleaning the apartment out,
Chairs and tables gone to friends,
What no one wanted taken to
The Goodwill a few blocks away.
But so much that had no use.
A drawer filled with rubber bands
And those colored plastic tabs
Used for closing bags of bread
In case one broke, just in case,
Used and smoothed out Reynolds wrap,
Almost empty jars of spices,
Ballpoint pens from other decades,
Archive of old electric bills,
Crossword puzzles, Gothic novels,
In the closet wire hangers,
Clothes addressing long-gone fashions,
Beneath the bed and its pillow
Crumpled Kleenex, clumps of dust,
In the bathroom medicines
For illnesses already cured—
Everything into the dumpster,
Bits of stuff that had outlasted
The one who made her sense from them,
Who had tended these resources,
Knowing that someday, someday.
Christmas Dinner
That Christmas morning I was up
at 5:30 to start cooking.
I made that cake I always made,
dates steeped in a little brandy,
grated nutmeg, best vanilla,
and while it was in the oven
waxed the table, set the silver,
toasted pine nuts for the green beans,
apple bacon, piloncillo,
fresh thyme and such costly beef
for the daube, to which I added
stout to make it extra rich.
One o’clock we sat to dinner.
He could only lift a spoonful,
asked could he lie down again.
The daube was so deeply bitter
it was like descending stairs
chiseled in a granite quarry.
Every dish was alkaline.
If I’d known it was our last,
better we’d sat on the floor
with a piece of bread and salt
and watched the sunlight cross the room.
But no way I could have known,
No way faced the obvious.
