Your Care of Me is Much Appreciated

You talked me into this nursing home place.
Didn’t want to be safe but you made me safe.

Did you think being spoon-fed by strangers
wouldn’t make me pitiful powerless?

Bed linen all smooth white right tight.
Mighty kind of you. Didn’t ask

for any of this. Yes there’s a window yes
I can see snow on gray parked cars but

no birds no blue no trees. I want
to be sprung from this place.

Stride among hale pines.
An axe placed in my hand. Some good

wood chopped. Then a fire
to make me free.

A Song of Dementia

Spell song, spill song, song of lags and stutters
Your Ma and I sure had a good time visiting you and your family. She loved the ocean.

Spall song, sag song, song of rags and tatters
We sure got a lot of wood in last winter. At any rate, it warms you twice.

Song of separate, song of eviscerate
Cousin Peggy. We went to Central Park on the train.

Song to anguish, song to languish
Raising rabbits. We needed the food.

Song of deadfall
I’d like some whisky.

Song to nightfall
Thank you  beautiful

Song of
Much     ber  er

So
Lo          you

Elizabeth Ambos writes and lives in Washington, DC. She has embraced multiple careers as a geoscientist, teacher, researcher, and administrator in higher education-affiliated organizations. A participant in the PocketMFA program, she is currently working on her MFA in Creative Writing at Hood College. She has recently published or has work forthcoming in Wild Roof Journal, Gramercy Review, WWPH Tiny Poems, Dos Gatos Press, and Dancing Girl Press.