Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
Issue #6, January, 1999 : -- -1 -2  3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12 -13
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No Point In

Mary McGinnis

                 

No Point In

not sure how much longer
the toilet handle
will hold out.
We give Harriet a key to the house
and she fights the lock
that for weeks after her visit our own keys barely work.
To reach a cupboard
she balances on the faucet neck
so that now
it squirts at the fixture.
The toilet lever
half hanging off today,
linkage inside ajar,
a continual hiss & gurgling
coming from that end of the house.
No point in fixing it until she's gone.
The phone fell off the wall
yesterday, apparently a faulty
hook on the cradle.
How she managed to solidly jam
the two hinged folding windows
into a welded dovetail wedge
like the antlers of doomed elk bucks
is an architectural mystery
and even the louver blinds were stuck cross-wise
slats askew
as she wrestled fiercely with the cranks hollering
for me to come join the battle.
I had to bring the car jack
and spread the window case
to free the anxiety.
The house soon reduced to
smoking rubble of an expired Rube Goldberg Device
the trigger of a cat's tail
tied to a toilet plunger
balancing the see-saw fulcrum
trombone hamster treadmill gears
dropping the black anvil
on my head.




Copyright © 1999 Mary McGinnis.

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Issue #6, January, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.