My Mother Calls

by Richard Jordan

She wants to tell me everything she hears

outside her bedroom window: the caw caw 

of a crow, a boy clanking by on a bicycle,

a dog howling & its owner shouting: stop. 

Last night she heard her father coughing

in the basement. She says that’s not unusual.

He left this world long ago, I say. No answer. 

What else is new? I ask. It’s early April.

I hope she’ll focus on her glorious daffodils,

her budding magnolias. Instead, she talks 

of a big bus idling across the street. 

I say, Azaleas? She says, It’s time to go.

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Richard Jordan’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, Cider Press Review, Connecticut River Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, The Squannacook at Dawn, won first place in the 2023 Poetry Box Chapbook Contest. He serves as an Associate Editor for Thimble Literary Magazine.