All used cups – 99 cents
and there is one well-used
A bit delicate
A sharp lip
The floral design fading into china white
She drank her coffee black
I conclude with a tipping look
or perhaps a single sugar cube but certainly
this cup lived its life favorited

It has rested beside many morning papers
and accompanied many fresh tea-biscuits
here it is - sad - lonely
its friends saucer and spoon lost
at the bottom of a box in back

All these other stranger cups surrounding
most haven’t a clue how to be a favorite cup
You must meet her lips just so
for what you contain is both
a delight and dangerous

You must shape into her hands lovingly on cold mornings
and balance perfectly from her aging fingers
when her mind is engaged elsewhere
Your morning greetings should be bright and hopeful
reminding her daily of all she is likely to forget
- There is beauty in the world to savor today
- There is goodness in every drop of life
- There is truth to be stirred by even now

It is not an easy thing to be a favorite cup
you must endure many more scrubbings
than the visitors cups
and the thoughtful-gift cups
the ones which say “Worlds Greatest Grandma”
the ones loved but unused
You are far more likely to be dropped and chipped
so you must be stronger than the rest
and more than any other dish in the cupboard
you become part of who she is
until the day she dies
and when
she does
the plates and bowls and holiday mugs
will always find a new home
you never will

and to the holy faces that surround me always (the artists)

To these rooms-
always in double-standard disarray
and bearing witness to my beginning of life crisis
with borders of brilliant rectangular windows, never left open,
captured closed by the boy with the stolen necklaces
(it’s a shame, but I’ve never known how to ask for light on my face or for help)

To the memory of Ginsberg until 4 in the morning,
poetry and Moloch eating our five warm and open minds

To the nail hole badges our walls wear in honor of creation, the abandonment and the constant new order of
art and art and clean art and bad art
and genius; my words are their brain children

To the conversely barren walls (they make me nauseous),
the daily scrubbings of the kitchen counters,
fears manifested in ***** bathrooms
and the oppressive blue and ‘Turbulent Indigo’
of the speakers in my bedroom
where I lay my head in contemplation of the boy I share a bed with,
watching him- reading the freckles on his back into novels,
thick with tear stains, I put my eyes right up to the pages
because who doesn’t love the smell of an old book?
(and so everything is grey and illegible now)

To the all-over ceramics:
ashtrays pregnant with vice and the relief of night,
that Jordan molded with her own two hands
and the endless owls in all our cupboards
that Caleb made before he crawled back,
tail between his legs,
to the porches and whiskey of South Georgia

This is for all I have come to know in the mad house:
that our love is as inconsistent as the arrangements of blankets in the living room,
that we should all be leery of the color blue
and computers and computers and, for that matter,
technology as a whole-
especially when we are together

I have come to know what it is to live in a commune of pitiful couches leaking ***** of sad cotton,  
of concoctions of vegetables (never pure enough)
and dishes in the kitchen sink and white carpets thick with cat hair,
which is why we sing those words, absentmindedly,
when we fold clothes or put on our pajamas.
(The air in this house is stuffy with all that we don’t know how phrase just right)

And yet, the sun licks the morning off of Dallas
and all that carved a hole in my middle yesterday becomes irrelevant and untrue
as I toast the day in honor of these people and this shelter-
the glory of a canvass, a picture frame, a blanket from Colorado,  and screws in dry wall

So, I write
because of the homemade pillows, because of marijuana, because all life is an attachment and I am glad to be attached to all of you
I write out of gratefulness, out of understanding
I write because I’m with you
(with all of you)
in Rockland.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                    Hospital Waiting Room in Advent

          “How could I bear a crown of gold when the Lord  
                bears a crown of thorns? And bears it for me!”

                          -Heilige Elisabeth von Thuringen


The pre-dawn parking-lot is crowded enough,
And almost pretty with the high orange-ish light
Reflecting nicely on the rainy pavement.
The cold wind blows a lonely paper cup along

Among the puddles and the lonely cars
With the more-than-one-family-members
Dozing or reading their MePhones - it seems
as if the world itself is a waiting room for now

In the lobby a queue forms, everyone standing
Six feet away from each other as ordered by
Plastic signs on the floors. A cheerful-enough
Volunteer aims a little plastic gun

At each human head as it passes,
And asks each owner of a head
DO YOU HAVE ANY SYMPTOMS DO YOU HAVE
A SORE THROAT HAVE YOU BEEN AROUND ANYONE

WITH THE CORONAVIRUS
HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF STATE RECENTLY

Does Louisiana count?

Pass, friend.

A cold and fashionable Christmas tree obscures
An image of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen
Next to the row of elevators marked ‘B’
Along a covid-silent corridor

A visitor with his mask and his pass
Can hear his footsteps echoing-echoing
As he passes through the silences,
And reads signs announcing activities

Scheduled long ago that were canceled
Long ago because of the lockdowns.
Only rarely will he see a masked and gowned figure
Seemingly scuttling into hiding

While carrying a tray of lab specimens
Or pushing a cart or whispering into
An official glowing screen. Doors that used to be
Open are secured with NO ENTRY

Or STAFF ONLY signs, and former passages
Are blocked with new plywood panels
Or panes of clear plastic in this unclear time.
The cardiovascular ICU waiting room

Is empty – ONE FAMILY MEMBER ONLY,
Reads a sign scotch-taped to a door, and
NO COFFEE BECAUSE OF THE CORONAVIRUS
YOU WILL FIND COFFEE IN THE CAFETERIA

Announces another. Some seats are marked off-limits
With yellow crime-scene-ish tape even though
There is no one in the room to be made off-limits.
The television is dark and silent,

The floors and plastic chairs are clean-upon-clean
From repeated daily wipings and scrubbings
And sprayings although almost no one
Ever goes into that room now. There are no people,

No magazines, no bottles of water,
Nothing in the litter baskets. It’s like
A scene from one of those Star Trek episodes
In which an away-team beams down

To a deserted space ship, a deserted city,
Or a deserted planet, only there is no
Thematic background music in the hospital.
This is the block of floors and space given over

To cardiac care and surgery;
The areas where CV patients are treated
Are hidden behind doors and walls and faces
Of appropriate secrecy and discretion.

Behind those doors and walls life and death
Are worked out through the work and thought and education
And brilliance and industry and love
Of so very many ministers of grace,

From physicians to the nice fellow with
The bucket and mop, and through the mysteries

Of God and His saints.

As for our visitor, he can do nothing but take a seat –
One without the yellow crime-scene-ish tape – and wait
In silent prayer for one he loves.

Saint Elizabeth, pray for us