Barry Dickson is a retired Creative Director. His poetry has appeared in journals including North American Review, PEARL, and HazMat Literary Review. He’s been a Hearst Poetry Prize finalist and received a Pushcart Prize “Special Mention.”

Pillow Talk

I have not changed pillow cases since you left
six weeks ago, just to keep your scent around.
Each morning I wake up spooning a quilt
rolled into a Lucinda surrogate.

Remember, every night I would call you Toasty
and you would call me Roasty
and we pledged never to reveal these embarrassments
though you feared one day they would show up in a poem,
but I reassured you?

Remember how we would whisper when the lights went out
until it occurred to us, there’s no one else here
what the heck are we always whispering for?

Remember the night you woke me at 3AM just to make love
and we did and the next morning I had no recollection of it?
Boy were you pissed. (Incidentally, if You’re beautiful when
you’re angry is so patronizing, why did your
teal blue eyes smile every time I said it?)

Remember the night I told you
you’re the smart funny one,
and you kept saying, no you’re the smart funny one.
And finally I said OK, I’m the smart, funny one and you said
What the hell is that supposed to mean!?

Remember how I would fake snoring?
The truth can now be told.
I was only faking half the time.

Remember the night I laughed so hard
I fell out of bed and you wouldn’t let me back in
and I said OK then, I’ll just get in my car
and go stay in a luxury hotel somewhere
and I did, and you got in your car and followed me
and we spent that amazing night at the Plaza?

You know, when I returned from shopping Sunday
my friend Jack, the shrink, said he thinks I’m finally
getting over you. I asked how he knew and he said
look in the bag. And there they were.
New pillow cases.

I guess he didn’t notice they were teal blue.

Yet Another If-I-Had-Life-To-Do-All-Over-Again-Poem

First, I would shut up more.
I discovered one cannot talk and learn at the same time.
Oddly, I could talk and listen. But it would always be me
I’m listening to. And never once, in all my life,
did I ever hear myself say something I didn’t already know.

This time I will not leave the hospital early the day my mother dies,
just because I’m feeling fidgety. I will be there when she goes,
to say good-bye to someone who thought
all my ideas brilliant, all my jokes hilarious
and “Warren Beatty and Brad Pitt could only wish they had such a face.”
Most of us don’t get more than one of those in a lifetime.

Speaking of which, this time I will not let Lucinda Gluck go,
just because I thought her ultimatum was “too soon.”
Too soon for what, Barry? Too soon to be loved?
Too soon to have a best friend for life?
Too soon to go to bed every night with the smartest, most
beautiful woman in eastern Pennsylvania?
Clearly it wasn’t too soon to be an asshole.
And if she ever reads this, I will be mortified.

That’s another thing I will do this time around: Be mortified more.
This business of not doing because of what might happen
creates a life lived in place. Before life can go somewhere good,
it must first simply go. Like Yogi said,
“We’re lost, but we’re makin’ good time.”