Two Poems

by Patricia Russo

News of the World

I put my suitcase on the floor,

my backpack on the bed,

knowing full well

the house was loud with ghosts

but I wasn’t expecting them

to all be talking about you.

They pass the nights

rehashing your days

recounting your misdeeds

like bedtime stories.

This makes it hard to fall asleep

and gives me nosebleeds.

The only mitigation I’ve discovered

so far

is to leave all the windows open

which is going to make things interesting

when winter comes.

But that’s a problem for another season.

Maybe I should get a radio

and let it talk to me all night,

narrating other people’s catastrophes

to distract me from my own,

the way my mother did when she was dying,

but still interested in the world.

Freezer

She’s always been like this, my sister says

you can’t expect her to change now.

She’s always loved coming back from the dead.

She’s not going to stop, and you have to accept that.

Fine, I say, but we don’t have to wait here for her

night after night between eight and ten

year after year between forty and sixty

to make her tea, and feed her ice cream

and listen to her stories about people we never met

should she choose to show up.

We could just go, I say,

and my sister nods, then goes to check the freezer

to see which flavor

I brought home today.

BIO: Patricia Russo's work has appeared in One Art, The Sunlight Press, Vagabond City, Hex Literary, Heimat, Waffle Fried, Revolution John, and Crow and Cross Keys.