JEANNE'S BOREDOM.

A WOMAN AND HER MEMORIES.

Jeanne sits bored. Mother
Said there’d come moments
Like this. What a shame Mother
Isn’t around to witness being

Gaga in some hospital wing in
New York where strange birds
Sing. Or so she’d heard Mother
Say dribbling into bib, eyes blue

And blank, the white circling the
Dullness. Thinking of life’s passions,
Jeanne lights a cigarette, inhales,
Lets the smoke edge the throat,

And thinks on Barty that old fart
With the straying hands, but he
Means well, old friend of Mother’s,
Sat once with presidents, had sex

With their weird wives if he’s to be
Believed. And maybe she does believe,
After all belief is just a leap from
The dark unknown into make belief.

She smiles, a Kierkegaardian allusion
There, she thinks, remembering the
Old books Father gave with the stiff
Spines and frayed edges. She sniffs

In the boredom deeper, it mingles
With smoke, forms a curtain; and
Why does the radio always play that
Trite especially when the day is dull

Enough; and the periods start like a
Red revolution with the usual deaths.
Poor Mother, her and her birds and
The oddity of surviving the roll call of

Death only to be left half-undone.
No joke, being that kind of survivor,
Jeanne muses, watches the smoke lift
Upwards, remembering her father’s delicate

Descriptive words on Auschwitz’s chimneys
And ashes falling. Jeanne stubs out the French
Cigarette, the finger in for the kill. Remembers
Father’s memories, words, and his deep voice still.