For Jerry
He’s a few months shy of ninety but doesn’t look it. He walks the Pomeranian two miles every afternoon, and he takes his wife swing dancing on Thursdays down at the grange. He volunteers at the veteran’s hall in the valley a few days a week, too. He stays busy is what I’m saying. They’re even going on a cruise to Alaska next week. I don’t look towards the future, he tells me. I just look back, way way back. I can’t expect the past to be anything but what it was, so it can’t disappoint me. I can’t be afraid of the past, either—I’ve accepted everything I’ve done wrong. But the future is a gamble, he says. Someday I’ll die, or at least that’s what they tell me. He laughs at his own joke and then takes off down the block, looking young for his age but still old, still on the brink of what none of us can face until the very end. And even then we think no, this can’t be.
Fruit Trees
The fruit trees are going to have to go. They’re in the front yard, for one thing—seven in total. The old man who died here (maybe by suicide—the neighbors clam up when we ask about him), he loved birds, so he wanted all these fruit trees to attract blue jays, robins and quail. Most of all, he loved the ravens—he would fill a giant wooden bowl with rotting fruit and set it on the front lawn, and the ravens would descend on the house like a whirling black cloud. I wonder why they haven’t come back, but my husband says ravens are some of the smartest birds around. They know he’s dead, he says. Maybe they killed him, I say. The mystery of Gordon’s death looms over us like a specter, a ghost, hooded and hunched as we take the saw to the fruit trees, their trunks white and frothing with life under the blade. I look away just before each one falls, but I still hear the sad sound of their branches collapsing on the ground like the skirts of a woman dropping around her ankles. Sorry, I whisper to Gordon as I drag the spindly trees around back and throw them on the burn pile. The birds watch from high up in the pines.
Janelle Cordero is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in Spokane, WA. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate, Hobart and North Dakota Quarterly, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Janelle is the author of four books of poetry: Impossible Years (V.A. Press, 2022), Many Types of Wildflowers (V.A. Press, 2020), Woke to Birds (V.A. Press, 2019) and Two Cups of Tomatoes (P.W.P. Press, 2015). Stay connected with Janelle's work at www.janellecordero.com and follow her on Instagram @janelle_v_cordero.