Ask Again Later

Ask Again Later, 1968

(For my little brother, JDR)

By Patricia Reinhardt Mondragon, Writer



When you were a kid I gave you an 8 ball

For Christmas

And since you, an Age of Reason skeptic

Were already a wiseacre

An atheist

An anti-catechist

An infant who would shout

Jesus Christ! when spilling your milk

And since you, a Televiewer, were

Questioner of the Vietnam War at the age of

3 or 4 as in

Mom!

Why is god letting that happen to those people?

As in your savvy assessments of my boyfriends

Presenters of what you knew to be

Hopeless Diamonds

As in your Ed Sullivan like stance where you

Rocking

With arms crossed would query

Other people:


Who…or shall I say,

What, are you?

You the Littlest Interlocutor

At last surprised me.


You so engrossed

So taken with

So carried away

By the little black lacquered ball

Which you turned over and over

In your chapped, red,

Fire starting

Frog

Catching hands

Hardly looking up for hours

Whispering your questions

Seeking the triangulated answers

“Ask Again Later”

Elegy for a Pit Bull

Elegy for a Pit-Bull

Patricia Reinhardt Mondragon, Writer


That simple.

Like The Stranger I found myself

On the beach

The sky huge

The water huge

The heat huge

Emptiness… a dance to that

A ride across it

On a sea-rusted bicycle

What is it about these endless stretches

Of beach that brings out

The Walker on Water and

The Cool Killer

Alike?

The solitary figure at the edge

Of Life and Time like

Camus’ L’Etranger

Myself

Stragglers and Runaways of Every Kind?

Here it goes.

There was a pit-bull

A skinny skanky near dead dog

Tide to a pole

Tide to pole near Bob Hall Pier

Resignedly

With not the least

Bit of fight left

Whatsoever

Waiting for the tide to roll in

Opening her heart

To the Divine Indifference of the Universe

Body in a curve

Fetal as a pup in a caul

Nearly lifeless

Each and every bone numbered

Not even so much as looking up

Waiting

For the water to come

For her heart to burst