The Community Center
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
Mom,
all your neighbors are gone
Viral gusts blow through your wing
Silence
After hacking and wheezing
Drown out halting words
Even ones who were just losing it
Roaming at all hours
Like your pal
When I saw him a year ago
I thanked him for
being your friend
He gleaned my gratitude maybe
Feeling my warmth
Without the memory to grasp my words
I’m sure by now he has left
For the community center
You all pass through after such gales
Where coffin and urn options
Are as heavy as viral loads
And the crematorium is in the garage
Two and a half years
We kept you safe
Until we couldn’t
When people say
What a good son I was
I feel so hollow
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Yahrzeit
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
Mom called me
My childhood nickname
One year after her death
The sound rang clear
That my brain played
From an archive of talks
Such a distant memory given
Her last months
She couldn’t speak at all
Silenced by
End stage dementia’s aphasia
And covid-based “failure to thrive”
She doesn’t want anything
Isn’t disappointed
It sounded like our weekly phone dates
Connecting across miles
To catch up
I miss those calls
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About the Author
Clark A. Pomerleau (he/him) is a writer and teacher from Washington State. He enjoys neurodiversity but not mast cell disease. Clark has published the poetry book, Every Day, They Became Part of Him (Finishing Line Press, 2023), the chapbook, Better Living through Cats (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and a monograph about feminist diversity training called Califia Women (U. Texas, 2013). Other poetry and prose appear in Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature; Peculiar: A Queer Literary Journal; Beyond Queer Words; About Place Journal; Lupercalia; Poached Hare; Coffin Bell Journal; and the poetry anthology, Welcome to the Resistance (2021).