Featured Poet - Ellaraine Lockie

THE AFTER ANNIVERSARY

For my husband after he ended his life

If I planned the perfect scenario to solo-celebrate our wedding anniversary, it would be in our favorite way. I’d put the top down 

on my 1999 Mustang convertible. Wear your herringbone 

driving cap. Drive to the summit of the mountains overlooking 

Silicon Valley. Backseat replete with a picnic basket holding 

a blanket, bottle of Ridge Zinfandel, a collection of cheeses, 

wholegrain crackers, strawberries and dark chocolate.

I’d turn onto the dirt off-road. Stop where the forest scales 

a steep slope umbrella’d by oak trees. Spread the picnic blanket. 

Then laugh out loud at the year we forgot that blanket. 

At the doctor’s later diagnosis of the rash on my butt 

and back of legs. Wearing a straight face he said “Poison Ivy.”

With this drive I would bring you back to life. Yet here I sit 

on the couch eating potato chips and milk chocolate. Staring 

at the paper-you inside the frame that must have corralled 

you beyond endurance. 

First published Ibbetson Street.

~

THIS CLOUD ACCORDING TO THE WIFE

After the photo, “Outside the Artist’s Studio, San Pedro” by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Some say it was the random hand of wind 

that fanned this cloud into wings

That sunrays happenstanced the sky in pastels

above the husband standing by the train tracks

His future on the line behind the storage sheds

The perfect place to keep a suicide private

The wife says the wings were those of an angel

constructed by the almighty Creator

Who watercolored the sunrays into shades 

of apricot/cantaloupe/pearl pomegranate 

The husband’s favorite colors

Then painted the backdrop in the hue 

of his baby blue eyes

The wife says the Creator clipped 

the angel’s wings close to earth

To hover before escorting

the husband’s soul to heaven

After his body took a giant step

and the train exploded him into smithereens 

Some say it was weakness

That he couldn’t fly away

But they don’t know the strength of faith

Of the childhood altar boy in him

How he walked away 

from the priest’s hand on his thigh

But took the Almighty with him

Some say it was madness

The wife also says it was madness 

Medical madness with the name Primidone

Inflicted by physicians who didn’t

read medical charts that say depression

Or the word suicide listed as a side effect

First published Monterey Poetry Review.

~

MOURNING SPEAKS MANY LANGUAGES

I don’t cry about his suicide

Others think I don’t have any feelings

My tears are ink that flows from pen onto paper

Others don’t know mourning speaks many languages

Others think I don’t have any feelings

I listen over and over to Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique

Others don’t know mourning speaks many languages

In other cultures mourners are hired to cry

I listen over and over to Symphony No. 6 Pathétique

Tchaikovsky’s rumored suicide softens my husband’s

In other cultures mourners are hired to cry

Sometimes I want to live in China or Egypt

Tchaikovsky’s rumored suicide softens my husband’s

They say misery loves company

Sometimes I want to live in China or Egypt

where they pay performers to wail, moan and weep

They say misery loves company

In China or Egypt I wouldn’t be judged

where they pay performers to wail, moan and weep

The custom goes back to the Bible

In China or Egypt I wouldn’t be judged

My tears are ink that flows from pen onto paper

Others don’t know mourning speaks many languages

I don’t cry about his suicide

First published Ibbetson Street.

~

THE SEMANTICS OF SUICIDE

As a child the euphemisms 

that defined death confused me 

We lost Grandpa my mother said

I asked her where we could find him

She said he was in a better place

I envisioned Disneyland 

My dad’s morning coffee crony

said his cousin kicked the bucket

And I couldn’t wait to play with him

When I grew old enough to understand

I used the word died and felt 

like an honest adolescent 

When my husband ended his life via suicide 

loved ones needed to be told first 

on the telephone and by me

I used words sharpened by shock and truth

with no platitudes to polish those words

The fact that He heaved himself in front of a train 

arrowed its recipients’ hearts as it shot from my mouth

Referring to a man who never raised his voice

in all the years of our marriage

A man who gentled everyone in his life

A pacifist who wouldn’t smash a mosquito on his arm

but blew on it instead 

Continuing to tell the inconceivable to friends 

and neighbors became my mission

Hoping it was faster than gossip

that grew on the neighborhood grapevine

or hardened by headlines in the local newspaper

The same no-nonsense words from me

now smoothed into softness by the rhythm of repetition

I watched the recipients relax into the arms of honesty 

where they didn’t need to worry about semantics for my sake

My mother might have said He took his own life

As for where he would have put it

I believe it’s on a golf course in Scotland

First published MacQueen’s Quinterly.

~