• Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Facebook Twitter Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home»Curated»Care»Skip Renker – A Widow

Skip Renker – A Widow

0
By Mom Egg Review on February 13, 2021 Care, Poetry

Skip Renker

 

A Widow

Honeymooning near the rim of a volcano,
who wouldn’t catch fire?

She laughed when he re-phrased St. Augustine:
“Better to marry and to burn.”

She stopped smoking.
He didn’t.

In restaurants, diners at other
tables began to do all the talking.

Their sweetest child
grew into a smoldering adult.

They moved a thousand miles from the ocean.
She dreamed of rigging, the crow’s nest, a cavernous hold.

A retirement cruise, deck chairs, brilliant stars—
they rubbed and warmed each others’ hands.

Dying, remembering the one necklace he ever
gave her, he whispered “Beads…beads…”

She dreams of her mother and father
backing away across a green field.

She wakes to his framed photograph
on the nightstand, next to the heirloom ashtray.

Sometimes she gazes.
Sometimes she rolls away.

 


F.W. “Skip” Renker has recent poems in Presence, Leaping Clear, and The Awakenings Review, and poems in the Atlanta Review, Poetry Midwest, and Passages North anthologies.  He has a Pushcart nomination.  His books are Birds of Passage (Delta Press), Sifting the Visible (Mayapple Press), and Bearing the Cast (St. Julian Press).  He lives with his wife Julia Fogarty in the beautiful lakefront town of Petoskey, Michigan.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleChristine Stewart-Nuñez – Excess Rex
Next Article Aimee Pozorski – It’s Nothing You Did

Comments are closed.

March 30, 2023

Yours, Creature by Jessica Cuello

March 30, 2023

Barnflower by Carla Panciera

March 30, 2023

Mother Kingdom by Andrea Deeken

March 30, 2023

Everything’s Changing by Chelsea Stickle

March 30, 2023

Dragonfly Morning by Elina Eihmane

March 29, 2023

Coming Soon–MER Vol. 21!

March 29, 2023

April Poem-a-Day Challenge

March 29, 2023

Poem of the Month – April 2023

March 14, 2023

Save the Date! MER 21 Launch Reading May 21 in NYC

March 14, 2023

MER Online Quarterly – March 2023

Copyright © 2022 MER and Mom Egg Review
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.