Michael Estabrook

I'm in Harvard Square having a grilled cheese sandwich in the hole-in-the-wall eatery I like to frequent (cheese burger, pickles, pile of fries, and a coffee all for $4.85) when one of the guys who works there starts telling me the Red Sox are losing their playoff game eleven to one. I'm polite because he's a nice guy, but I don't follow baseball, don't care anything about baseball. He's sweeping and chattering about the Sox when this odd-shaped man (like a lopsided pear with an owl's head) with dark wide eyebrows and a long white forehead all-of-a-sudden starts making violent twitching movements with his arms and body. The broom-guy stops sweeping and goes back behind the counter. Then the guy with the dark eyebrows falls on his back on the floor and groans, jerking his arms like crazy in this eerie way that's hard to describe. I'm still sitting there, chewing, I don't know what else to do. I don't know CPR or anything, or even if that's appropriate in this situation. I ask broom-guy if jerking-arm guy comes in here often. He nods, then solemnly asks the poor fellow if he wants help getting up off the floor. But he keeps groaning, sits up briefly, then lies back down again with his arm over his eyes. "Some kind of epilepsy," broom-guy whispers. But I don't know what to say except, "Maybe he's heard about the game." Broom-guy glares at me sternly then, and says, "Ssssh!"

Spring 2007

Drinking a Pepsi

Sometimes I listen to the rain
and wonder, like Newton and Socrates
and Goethe must’ve wondered,
about life. For some reason
the rain does that -
flushes philosophical queries
out from the murk and the shadows
into the light.
Someone at work died this week.
I didn’t know him.
I knew of him, knew who he was,
but we never spoke, never even said hello;
not because I didn’t like him,
I didn’t even know him.
But a couple months ago I saw him
sitting in the cafeteria,
alive as rain, drinking a Pepsi.
And now today - he’s dead,
just like that, dead and gone.
Gives you something to think about,
whether you want to or not.

as toes tend to do

It’s just a test that’s all,
a trial, no one said
it would be easy, particularly at the end
to be 83 years old and dying,
with no where to go, no escape,
your body failing,
the instruments beeping, lights flickering,
your wife stroking your forehead and hair
so lovingly, saying, “It will
be all right Joe. I’m here with you,
I won’t leave you, it will be all right.”
Your children, your brother,
looking down at you, helpless.
Damn orderly who keeps bumping
your sore toe, the one
they amputated two weeks ago,
but still seems to be there, lingering
(as toes tend to do), hot, achy, throbbing
(in its own peculiar way),
hanging on just like you.
“Where’d I put my rosary,” I wonder,
“And my Bible, the one my Momma
gave me a lifetime ago.”
It’s just a test that’s all, a trial,
life that is.

I’m a Marketing Communications Manager for a tiny division of a gigantic company, and man, going into an office every day is excruciating. I’ve been writing poetry for so long that Methuselah should be taking notice, but in reality, time is simply doing its thing streaking ahead blithely pulling all of us along for the wild ride whether we like it or not; reminds me, I’ve published 15 poetry chapbooks over the years, the last one just came out about my Dad, “methinks I see my father,” done in cahoots with the talented Glenn Cooper from Australia, and before that was “when Patti would fall asleep,” about my wife. Guess you could say I’m a family man.

Jennifer Balkan

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