Inaccurate Forecast

A Poem by R. Gerry Fabian

The exhaust fan
pulls in your scent
like a bloodhound.

Summer’s humid night
refuses to move
in any direction.

In your sleep,
you whimper love.

The weather forecaster
says there is
no relief in sight.

Too often they are wrong.

Boiled Cabbage

A Poem by R. Gerry Fabian

I ask her if she would like a tuna sandwich?
“Lord in heaven, no!”
Her inflection and phraseology are a spot on
duplication of her mother.
“When we were poor, we ate tuna fish and
those Chinese noodles with the repugnant
flavor packets twice a week.
I’ll never eat another bite of tuna as
long as I breathe.”
She says it with the venom of
a rattlesnake bite.

She was never poor.

In my family, it was liver.
My mother’s second cousin was a butcher.
We ate liver, at least, once a week.
Contrary to “Miss Tuna Fish”,
I love liver.
Fry up some beef liver with onions
and that brown gravy and I’m in heaven.
Today,
try and find liver in your grocery store.
I “double dog dare you.”

And of course, there is always
boiled cabbage.