Karen Hildebrand

Stained Glass of Sainte-Chapelle At Sunset

He has taken to his recliner
my dad, loyal dog at his feet

replaced on the job by an upstart.
“It’s a gift!” I say. “Fuck ‘em!”

Dogged to the end, he’d refined
that job from crude. “What about

golf? You used to draw.”
Nope. He raises a glass

of Cutter, pointing the remote.
Behold: young man squinting

from white stucco lawn,
James Dean tight

t-shirt washed thin,
jaunty cigarette, two

feet of fresh caught
trout, a brag, a grin.

 


Karen Hildebrand is the author of Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books, 2018), and recent poems have appeared in Scoundrel Time, Poetry Bay, South Florida Poetry Journal and Maintenant: a contemporary journal of Dada art and writing. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and lives in Brooklyn.