Lynn Strongin

i.

Mother is going to bed forever

we are hanging up jackets
luminous
as though immersed in silver-salts in the old days
when photographs were
developed like that.

ii.

The Squeaky Wheel gets the grease:
she did not cry.

Funeral wagons
& dark salt passed her by.

iii.

Now Haldol is her guardsman Haldol

salutes those who go & come cheering her enough to keep her eyes open:

Lorazepam closes them while Nemendo
toggles memory, exacting a catechism as tough as the beadman's In a blues-suffused
New York Moment, things could change.