Done with work, my friend calls
crossing the bridge into Queens.
He’s on his way to see Jimmy
in hospice. Jimmy told him
to stay home, he didn’t want
to be remembered lying in bed,
drifting in, out of pain and sleep,
too weak to speak. But Mike’s
not sure he meant it, what’s
the best, right, thing to do.
Jimmy, a neighborhood guy,
tall, gawky, with white, blonde
floppy hair, always smiling
or in his garage, under his car.
Grease down his forearms,
he could fling a football a mile.
That’s all I remember. Mike
brings up his own father’s death,
waiting for the morticians, asking
his sisters to leave, take their tears
with them while the body was lifted
out of the bed, slid and strapped
onto the gurney. He would’ve liked
to have seen him stuffed in the box,
made sure he was locked up good.

When me and my brother arrived
at mom’s hospice Monday morning,
they had us wait in the lobby. We looked
at each other, knew she was dead.
I thought about how bad I should feel,
her dying alone, not in her own home,
the amount of relief I was allowed to show,
how often, how deeply, the thought
would haunt me through the years. Jaime
caressed her face, cried, whispered to her.
I stayed by her feet, my face getting wet.
The nine months I helped take care of her
serving as my minute by minute goodbye.

Tony Gloeggler is a life-long resident of NYC and managed group homes for the mentally challenged for over 40 years. Poems have been published in Rattle, New Ohio Review, Vox Populi, Gargoyle, BODY. His most recent book, What Kind Of Man with NYQ Books, was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize and Here on Earth will be published by NYQ Books in 2024.