A Week of Arithmetical Notes Toward an Elegy

1. Fair of Face

Whenever I lie
on my side of what was once
our bed, I become

infix notation
in the tombstone sequence of
BORN–DIED.

2. Full of Grace

Subtraction is an
additive inverse: your blue
sweatshirt, inside out,

on the floor of our
closet, behind my rainboots.
Solve for what’s missing.

3. Full of Woe

An augend was my
first lover; an addend was
each subsequent one,

associative and
commutative. The result
is a life sentence.

4. Far to Go

Your absence is the
identity element
of my entire life.

5. Loving and Giving

If I add one to
a sum, there’s a successor.
There’s been none for you.

6. Hard for a Living

The reckoning? Some
of my desires are not the
sum of my desires.

7. The Sabbath Day

Don’t ask me to add
up grief. I’ve been given more
than I can carry

over.

One Word: Counted

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” 

How I counted on
…….you counted the minutes till
…………..I’d see you counted

all the hours the days
…….the weeks the months I counted
…………..all the stitches in

the samplers I made
…….for you the green afghan
…………..I crocheted for you

quilt blocks from your great-
…….grandmother’s aprons I pieced
…………..for you I counted

the steps to the car
…….the steps to the hospital
…………..the steps to the ER

I counted my breaths
…….and counted the number of
…………..times I squeezed his hand

and you slid out slick
…….you slid out blue you slid out
…………..going going gone 

I counted all ten
…….of your fingers and the June
…………..peas of your toes I

counted the days you
…….waited and the days you were
…………..early I counted

the seconds I could
…….hold you (729,
…………..a dozen minutes,

Nine seconds) counted
…….the times that afghan and that
…………..apron quilt wrapped round

you (seven) now I
…….count all my chickens each and
…………..every day Dan 

Nic Raleigh of course
…….I count you dear boy today
…………..the reckoning of

this broody hen counts
…….your father and I never
…………..had counted on that

Pamela Johnson Parker is the author of Cleave, which won the Trio Award and was published in 2018 by Trio House Press. Her poetry chapbooks are A Walk Through the Memory Palace and Other Four-Letter Words (both 2009). Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in various journals, including Anomaly, Diode, Anti-, American Journal of Poetry, Blue Fifth Review, KYSO Flash, and Alligator Juniper. Parker’s essay “Elemental” was nominated in 2018 for Best American Science and Nature Writing. She is the recipient of the Gabehart Award in Creative Nonfiction from the Kentucky Women Writer’s Conference, as well as a 2018 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. Parker works in Art & Design at Murray State University in western Kentucky.