David J. Thompson- Two Poems

After Auditions

My grandmother was down to next to nothing

the last time I saw her, a still, stick figure

in a hospice bed. She was breathing fine,

in and out of morphine sleep. I was watching

a ballgame on the muted wall tv, wondering

if the Applebee’s next to my motel was open late.

Suddenly I saw her eyes were open and she said

softly but matter of factly, I slept with that bastard

Eugene O’Neill one time after auditions in Provinceton,

but he was so drunk nothing happened.  I thought

he was going to make me a star .Then her eyes closed

and I took her hand, told her, That’s okay, Grandma,

and I hope that soothed her, but I’ll never know

if I said it in time.

Over My Dead Body

Screaming Mimi was my aunt’s professional name;

she was a stripper in Dallas in the 1960’s. One year

when I was a little kid, she brought her boss Jack Ruby

to our house for Thanksgiving. My mom seemed to like him,

at least more than most of Mimi’s other boyfriends back then,

but at the table during dessert he told a dirty joke real loud

right in front of me and my cousins about a traveling salesman

and a farmer’s daughter and nobody laughed except him.

It got real quiet until my mom asked if anybody wanted

another slice of pumpkin pie, said there was still plenty

of real whipped cream left.

A year later, after we watched him shoot Lee Harvey Oswald

on tv for the hundredth time, my dad grinned and said to mom,

Well, you can relax now. I guess you don’t have to worry

about your sister bringing him over for Thanksgiving again

next week. He’ll be here over my dead body, she replied,

sitting up straight in her chair. That filthy joke he told last year

really ruined my dessert.