Richard LeDue

The Most Unfunny Joke

The fact we’re all going to die has become the most unfunny jokeorganized in a cupboard, canned goods don’t even whisper about their expiration dates, like good children we never were, who sit quietly, waiting their turn (the can opener rusted, but still works).

Hands silenced by their own rough edges, hands once happy to play in mud, or feel a melted Popsicle run down fingers on a summer day, that sticky juice warning of old age, yet completely ignored in favor of sun burned legs chasing each other in a game we never named, only to end up laughingnow, it’s all faded into a memory, while we double check grocery lists. The scratch of a pencil deciding against rutabagas (or was it turnips?) sounding louder than it ever should.

Richard LeDue

What Goes Unsaid

Her liver gave out after three dead husbands: bootlegging to pay the bills, slurred conversations with cats because there’s no such thing as ghosts.

The doctor phoned my mother telling her her mother was dying, so she better come to the hospital (My father speeded the whole way, while reassuring us of all the times he had gotten “the call” before his father actually died).

My grandmother was staring at the ceiling when we ran in: her uneven breathing the only greeting, until her eyes glanced at us with a wordless goodbye.

We held her hands like one might grasp at silence for meaning.

My mother sobbing as the patient who shared the room ate a hamburger, and down the hall, a woman still quacked (we were never told their stories).

Richard LeDue