John Dorroh
Repurposed: That Which is Too Dear to My Heart
1.
The copper pots and pans go first, leading the parade
of items that I cannot keep. Pieces of my heart
stored in dingy Tupperware bowls, deep in the bowels
of this dingy, dank basement, shoved to the backs of wobbly
shelves, stored like canned beans and potatoes for over 10 years.
I toss them a vena cava, an aortic arch, and the artery
that connects to my head. “Cook some vegetables,” I say,
“and feed everyone that you can.”
2.
When the furnace dies, we know that the technicians
will need easy clearance to climb around in the chambers
below the house. I stack books and Bibles, empty her
20-year-old collection of hot sauces down the kitchen sink,
and parcel out more pieces of her life that I can no longer
keep.
3.
I give them all to Sue who is happy to receive them,
fragments of my mother’s life, placed in tiny libraries
on poles in parks all over town. I peer into a teeny
window to see my mother’s books, my heart pounding
a little faster with each peek, a cooling mist on my red face.
John Dorroh was born with a pen in his right hand. “I’ve always written,” he said. “My love of writing was fostered by my high school senior English teacher, Paul Ruffin. He demanded good writing on a regular basis. I wrote my first chapbook, Thin Man’s Lights, when I was 17, as a student of his. Although it wasn’t published, it served as a template for persistence.” His poetry can be found in about 90 journals, including Ephemeral Elegies, Ponder, Kleksograph, Feral, and Plum Tree Tavern.