Thirty Years
by and published in Edition Three of Pomegranate
1960
Urine-rusted wire boxes lined the warehouse.
Each contained some gray:
writhing, stiff limbs flicking;
pacing, eyes never within the bars;
lying still as a rock, jerking ribs the only movement.
A man reached into each eventually—
a final mercy.
1962
The coat was given to a wife
in hopes the fur would obscure her vision,
but four years later it was all she wore
when she lay on the bed beside the pill bottles.
1966
The mistress obtained it,
and a year later the man
watched it leave with her in a taxi.
1979
First a bracelet was pawned.
Then a watch.
A necklace.
The coat.
1980
At ninety-one, a widow
felt like an empress while watching Giselle
in her new coat, which she hoped only she knew
came from a shop smelling of dust.
1989
The costume director perused the estate sale,
looking for clothes for a play
that would trudge through a week
and close and never be thought of again.
1990
In a crate behind a theater,
a street performer whose robot impression
had only earned three burgers and bad rum
the week before hoped he had found a new paycheck,
a new persona to wrap himself in.
Janna Layton
Janna Layton lives in California, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as The Pinch, The Vocabula Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Umbrella, Press 1, and others. She also publishes interviews with poets in Mimesis.