Two Poems
Bradley Samore
Like a baby’s head, the supermoon
is crowning. After it clears the horizon,
I notice others are also capturing
the ascent, each phone between a face
and the ocean. Is this the week
I should start using FMLA to fly
out and help my parents? I walk
to the road and take a panorama
to text Mom the sky she is
too weak to see. One mass
in the tail of her pancreas.
Five lesions in her liver. No
warning. No explanation.
I crop away the beach, the lit
screens speckling the sand,
hit send.
Mom’s Second Infusion of Chemo Keeps Her in Bed
Turning
Dad would sit on the carpet,
his back against my bed,
and open to the next chapter.
Sometimes a week had wedged
between readings, yet he’d voice
each character’s timbre and lilt
the same as when he’d first given them
to the room. I’d watch the ceiling fill
with feasts, arrows loosed
from pictureless pages. I wanted
a sword to join the fight. Gone,
he says, my excuse to forget
the cooking, the cleaning,
the papers, the stress. Gone
the nights he would turn
and find me
asleep, who knows
how many pages ago.
Bradley Samore currently works as a technical writer. His poems have appeared in The Florida Review, Carve, The Dewdrop, and other publications. He is a winner of the Creative Writing Ink Poetry Prize. www.BradleySamore.com.