Carol Barrett

Tipton Poetry Journal – Spring 2021

Gunsmoke

Carol Barrett

In the cafeteria line between mashed potatoes and fried chicken, she asks me what kind of TV to buy for her husband, now in memory care with a roommate who watches reruns of Gunsmoke. With a second set, he could take in the news, feed his brain, trigger conversation. It must be easy to operate, heard over the horses hightailing it out of town. Her grandson could get earphones, but that’s too complicated. She just wants to stimulate his mind. She pauses on “mind,” peeling an orange. It’s going, yes, but surely the pace can be slowed, like his gait. She is back to the TV: so many shootings, terrible. She has placed orange segments in a perfect circle, offers me one. The others fall in fragrant concentric tilt. I think of those lost, one after another, down on their desks, a dance floor, dusty aisles, who brought this upon themselves only by being there. Maybe it’s better he watches smoke curling from the gun after the swift theft of cattle, a hold-up, stagecoach due west. At least there is a reckoning for the loss.

Carol Barrett coordinates the Creative Writing Certificate program at Union Institute & University and also teaches for Saybrook University. She lives in Oregon and has published two volumes of poetry and one of creative nonfiction. Her poems appear in JAMA, Poetry International, Nimrod, and many other venues.