Okay, so it’s Sunday. I didn’t
go to church. I’m an Irish Catholic,
I know about sin, but I was tired and
just didn’t feel like getting dressed.

On Thursday night, I fell and broke
a slat from the garden fence. My
hip still hurts – the bruise is as big
as my Yorkie’s head.

That would have been enough, but
this morning the vacuum coughed up
a hairball and quit. The only food in
the fridge is a bearded yogurt.

The washing machine refuses to spin.
There’s no clean underwear left, so
I’m not wearing any. Like I said,
I was tired; I didn’t feel like getting

dressed, so I didn’t go to church and
abdicated rights to all that grace.
I put on a pair of dirty jeans, a dirty
shirt, and sat outdoors all morning.

I did nothing but talk to my dogs,
watch squirrels, and wonder what it
might be like to nibble Prozac from
Johnny Depp’s lower lip.

Previously published in U.S. 1 Worksheets and included in What Matters (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2011).

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Adele Kenny‘s poems, reviews, and articles have been widely published in the US and abroad. She is founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series and poetry editor of Tiferet.

Object(s) to bring back to life: “I’d like to bring back my first car – a 1955 Ford Anglia. It was already old and barely running when my dad bought it and rebuilt the engine for me so I’d have a car to drive during my senior year in high school. Faded blue with rust details, it had four small cylinders and a stick shift. It didn’t like rain, rarely started when it snowed, and used as much oil as it did gas; but it got me to school, to work, and once or twice to the Jersey Shore when a friend and I “played hooky.” The nostalgia isn’t so much about my first “ride” as it is about that time in my life – when “once upon a time” was simple and happy, and the “romance” of yesterday was what we lived.”

Adele reads “Like I Said”: