Wipe Up
Hugh Fox
Hugh Fox just hit 79, dying (hopefully slowly) of cancer, 110 books published, another 10 coming out this year. The latest are Depths and Demons (from Skylight Press in England, a novel), another novel, Reunion to be published this month by Luminis Press, a volume of poems from Grey Sparrow Press.
+ Wikipedia
So he’s thirty and he still lives downstairs, works at a local
Younker’s, in charge of the Home Department, the jeans and
Shag shirts gone, so his new girlfriend has four kids and doesn’t
Work, but he’s known her for ten years, got back together with
her after his lawyer girlfriend told him to go hang himself, but
not mention her name on his suicide farewell-note, money
going out fast these days, thinking about buying his/their
own house, marrying Jessica, my wife, his stepmom starting
to resent everything about him, asking for ten dollars for gas
when he borrows her car to go to work, when we go shopping
together every Sunday after Chinese buffet lunch, always buying
a new shirt, another pair of jeans, baby clothes, who knows, an
umbrella, boots for Jessica or Miriam, Jessica’s latest baby,
“He’s a thief, I think he’s on drugs, he’s always borrowing old
DVD films of yours, I bet he’s selling them, and why didn’t he get
A girl with a degree, money, something up….,” hate-spill instead
Of the usual (first thirty years) love-spill, at first I just endure it
All, but then it begins to soak me in its acidic bitterness, HCL-
Vinegar, which I don’t need eighty, retired, soft sofa-ing it,
Loving that film about Stravinsky and Coco Chanel, another year
or two before the cancer finally buries me, can’t we just wipe
it all up and Spring comes, the mysteries start blooming, why
not let them bloom in a wiped-up, rebirthing world?
© Hugh Fox
