Linzi Garcia

Weekends as an At-Home Health Care Worker, or Terry Might Be Dead

for Terry Mansur & Jase Buck

 

Last night, Terry

was acting strangely—

telling me thank you,

I love you, oh, and,

See you in the a.m.,

but if I don’t

it’s because I took off

like a big bird.

 

This morning, I was

making coffee in her kitchen

when I thought I heard her

shout, as loud as an old lady can

shout, Open the damn door!

 

But, when I went to check

on her, she was asleep,

 

or at least that’s how it appeared.

 

Terry

might

be dead.

 

 

 

 

24

 

Yesterday, I felt 16 again—

light, optimistic, perky, supple.

 

Today, though...

well, today I feel old,

 

like a 7-year-old

Walmart shoe,

scuffed and threadbare.

 

Today, my feet ache,

I’m plump and dehydrated.

I drink a warm beer

left out after last night’s dinner

out of a sense of obligation

and my growing alcoholism.

 

Today,

I feel so old.

 

I might as well

be 30.

 

 

 

loafing

sugar ants

don’t bite me—

only sweat here

 

 

 

He wants

for Jason Ryberg

 

to be buried with a maple seed

planted in his ribs,

so as its roots burst

through his body

he’ll hold his pattern

of getting busted up.

 

He wants the tree to be big

and gnarly, so that we’ll say

we see his face in the bark.

 

 

 

 

DREAM SEQUENCE #4

 

driving in the dark–

on and on and on and on–

convinced the sun

will never rise again

 

 

Linzi Garcia can be found frolicking through fields, cemeteries, bookstores, and bars across the states. Her full-length poetry collection Thank You was published in 2018 by Spartan Press, and her chapbook about her time in London, Live a Great Story (co-written with Jase Buck), was published by Analog Submission Press (2019). While getting her MA in English at Emporia State University, Linzi worked as the graduate assistant to Poet Laureate Emeritus of Kansas Kevin Rabas and as an editorial assistant with Bluestem Press and Flint Hills Review. Linzi contains multitudes, currently consisting of, in part, working with multiple small presses and university presses in Kansas as a book designer, editor, reviewer, and publicist.