A Leap onto the Poetry Bus

Unresponsive

She was a bovine whiner found comatose in a messed-up apartment.
He was a morose engineer who knocked on her door.
In duty, he did it, at the behest of a mutual friend.
When he found her unresponsive, he did not apply
his bearlike shoulders to the door, but calmly called the paramedics
and tried to leave. They made him stay. So he went to the manager’s
and asked for the key. Together they waited for the ambulance.
The manager surveyed the disaster with greedy eyes
The pill bottles and pills scattered across the filthy counter
The faint shape with hillocks for breasts in a dirty white T-shirt
Lolling on the blue recliner chair, all of which surely
Would eat up the cleaning deposit. The engineer
Contemplated his waiting work in the middle distance.
It was all that he knew.
She complained about everything, the manager informed him.
Who would have thought she’d have any friends to miss her?
The engineer intercepted the emergency team when they arrived.
He gave them the number of the friend to call.
He said he had nothing whatsoever to offer, and they agreed.
Then he mounted his pickup and drove quickly away.

~.~.~.~.~.~

Good Luck Lantern by Sarah Winkler

TFE's Poetry Bus is on world tour today. Catch a ride here. Some of my readers have expressed dismay about this story. Our assignment was to use numerology to choose two people on a phone list and then choose a word in today's email box. I can't explain why I put these two people together in such a situation. They're likable souls, very much alive. The word "unresponsive" came out of an email about my own mother, who is also very much alive. The situation happened to me.

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