Having For So Long Been My Mother’s
Live-In Caregiver
I could call the doctor, make oatmeal,
buy vitamins, change batteries,
and dim the blinds all day long.
I could service your concentrator,
clean your nebulizer,
or do something else that sounds
like a euphemism but isn’t.
My days are scheduled around death.
I could drive you to my father’s grave,
clean the pigeon shit from his stone.
But only on holidays.
The rest of the time you would doze,
And I would leave brief messages.
Martin Vest’s poems have recently appeared in Rattle, Slipstream, Salamander, Misfit Magazine, elsewhere. Martin lives in the high desert of East Idaho, a stone’s throw from the Tetons.