Poetry by Jennifer Bradpiece

           Tim Vrtiska CC



Coffee Grounds

In the I.C.U.,
ammonia amnesia 
eviscerates the familiar 
from memory's mechanisms.
Machines dictate heartbeats,
each pressed breath
a countdown.
Tubes are crossing guards
ushering fluids in
and toxins out.
Gauze tape flags
direct the sway between
self and ether.
The beat between 
the in and out
grows longer,
as self compresses 
into other.
Whirring and bubbling  
eat at the linear 
measure of time
until the beeping 
swallows the senses
in the clean back kitchen
of the soul:
clanging anonymously
behind the warm revelry
of a full banquet hall.
The symphony of being
recedes into specific jobs,
clean of their relational interdependence.
Remembrance slides antiseptic
off the mop, the spray, the corridors
buzzing fluorescent.     
Yet in each sterile cell,
the body insists.
Its wastes flush and bubble
even as the veins retreat.
Even in this antiseptic cathedral
with clean confessionals and
chemical communions
the smell of rotting
resists erasure.
In the end, it's the shock
of coffee grounds
that deafens the death scent:
two hands setting out little cups
of unlikely dirt.
Used filters
held in front of pastel smocks--
so elemental, so earthly--
placed on the nurses' desks
next to buzzing phones,
in the stock closets
full of vacuum-sealed silver needles,
and the side tables of each room.
Like offerings, like votives,
like forgotten marrow,
some thing for memory to sieve through.




What we’re Left with Sometimes       

Her last words
His last look
Last hospital visit
Clay paw prints
Worn gas mask
Rented death bed
Singed lace bra
Cobalt bobbed wig
Unsent birthday card
Fifty stuffed bags
for Goodwill
Chipped nesting doll
Reverse mortgage
Adult diapers 
Old photographs
of unknown faces
Blue morphine
Self-help books
Broken lava lamp
Private journal confession
Long probates
One thousand last cigarettes
and one very last December




Smiles of my Dead 

Lately, I find myself wearing
the smiles of my dead.

My laughter now floats atop theirs
like small weights on weather balloons

Someone in a room or in the phone
shares something.
And another, who is absent,
takes over my expression.

Cat’s crinkled nose, 
her pursed lips wrinkling 'round piercings, 
nostrils slightly flared.

Mom’s staccato throaty notes,
a tune we shared at times
and one I coveted in days
she secreted it away for her
less intimate public.

The warm melting Heather’s
constant cool.
When her smile broke,
the temperature rose
around her.

Dad’s head back, his nearly silent 
chesty rasp rippling out,
impish eyes sparkling.
The laugh scored when I 
one up’d him with a terrible joke,
or pretended to bristle
at one of his own.

This alchemy is no death mask.
They are teaching me how to smile again.  

​

Jennifer Bradpiece was born and raised in the multifaceted muse, Los Angeles, California, where she still resides. Despite chronic pain and illness, she tries to collaborate as often as possible with multi-media artists on projects. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies, journals, and online zines, including Redactions, Mush Mum, and The Common Ground Review. She has poetry forthcoming in The Bacopa Literary Review and Moria, among others. Jennifer's manuscript, Lullabies for End Times will be released in early 2020 by Moon Tide Press.