Mrs. Barber’s Memory

By Joe Benevento

This nice old lady we visit
at Kirksville Manor Care,
seems like one of the ones better
off.  Though in a wheelchair, she
isn't ruled by chronic pain, roams
the halls, visits rooms occupied
by those few others able to hold
coherent conversations.
She doesn't even have dietary restrictions,
can eat any cake, cookies, candy
we remember to bring.

We only get there once a week,
Friday afternoons, not enough
for her to recall us at once,
but when we get talking
she is happy, especially with the children,
who don't mind answering the same questions
each week.

Although she can recall small
details from her childhood
in Cedar Rapids, and the words
to every song she's ever learned,
she thinks Christmas is past when
it hasn't, can no longer judge distance
from sorrow.  Last week, we found her
sad, alone, in her little room,
blue over having lost her husband
the week before, when it has really
been three years- her brain betraying
her to experience again
and again the key losses
of her life.

Metaphysicians have ever dwelt
on the foggy unreality of time.
Now so too Mrs. Barber.

Joe Benevento’s poems, stories, essays and reviews have appeared in close to 300 places, including: Prairie Schooner, Poets & Writers, Bilingual Review, Cold Mountain Review and I-70 Review. Among his fourteen books of poetry and fiction are The Odd Squad, an urban YA novel, which was a finalist for the 2006 John Gardner Fiction Book Award, and Expecting Songbirds: Selected Poems, 1983-2015, with the Purple Flag imprint of the Visual Artists Collective out of Chicago. Benevento teaches creative writing and American lit., including Latinx, at Truman State, where he also serves as poetry editor for the Green Hills Literary Lantern.