Cleaning Out Dad’s Apartment

Kenneth Pobo

Stacks and stacks of linen, neatly
folded, unused.  And five
Eisenhower silver dollars. 
Notebooks filled with every purchase
they made… in the 50s.  A story
I wrote when I was seven called
The Hospital.  Complete with drawings. 
Plot: I meet a nice teenager.  Dad lived

for 98 years.  Played ping pong
until a bad fall led to his end. 
In a hospital.  Spent one day
in hospice--and died. 
His apartment,

I feel like I’m dismantling him,
not just his things.  Given
30 days to empty it, I fill
the dumpster with much of his life,
save photographs, slides.  My Uncle’s
Purple Heart, killed in WW2.  
A glass-blown giraffe. 
A stuffed dachshund I had as a boy.   

Black plastic bags, shrouds
for outdated books and cookware.

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Kenneth Pobo
Kenneth Pobo (he/him) lives in Pennsylvania with his husband and cat. For thirty-three years he taught English and creative writing. In 2020 he retired from teaching—but not from writing. He is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), At The Window, Silence (Fernwood Press), Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press), and Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose (BrickHouse Books). Forthcoming from Wolfson Press is Raylene And Skip. His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Amsterdam Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Nimrod, Indiana Review, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere.