In a K-Mart in Wheeling, Birthday Shopping

Written By Kathleen Hellen

what’s this? when Bonnie Raitt sings I can’t make you... coming through the sound

system to the aisle where I cart in packages of ten
men’s socks you could have bought for yourself. The blue-light

special synced with wailing in this country west of filing. Fiddling
with the papers like a tune the lawyers groove

again, again, fretting
how I might survive without you with the kids ... the riff I can’t make you... gut-

wrenched in Aisle Fourteen where I fold just like the cards I dealt myself (dad said),

the tears stringing from my eyes. Strings that twist: You’ll never be... you said,
that day I told you what I wanted, and you left

the dishes in the sink. Left the boy at the gym, the other in the dark garage for hours―the music of our bodies left unheard, left

the heart shape shifting like a funny card that’s programmed to a switch, singing
til the battery goes dead

Kathleen Hellen

Kathleen Hellen’s credits include two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento, and her collection Umberto’s Night, published by Washington Writers' Publishing House. Her work has appeared in Ascent, Barrow Street, The Carolina Quarterly, Colorado Review, jubilat, New American Writing, New Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Subtropics, The Sycamore Review, Verse Daily, and West Branch, among others. Hellen’s latest poetry collection is The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin.

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