Lois Chiovoloni, my dear friend and my younger brother's widow, asked me to write a poem about "heartbreak", by which she meant widowhood. As it happens, I know a think or two about that . No way around it, folks, this is a sad one. Call this my trigger warning. As usual, the whole poem's posted on the Tupelo web site, and here's the opening.

Widowing Syndrome

                     After Ross Gay

Sometimes called heartbreak, a constellation of symptoms associated with the loss of that someone who was there when the sufferer broke her leg or buried her mother or heard, for the first time, the call of a particular warbler in a particular wood. The one who knew her blood type and liked to stand beside her rubbing her back while they chatted with neighbors. The onset is typically abrupt: the tones of her favorite song sours and flattens, sunlight shifts toward red, and there follows a sudden, vicious eruption of ordinary memories.

As you can see, it's a prose poem in the form of a medical diagnositic entry and I'm cribbing from Ross Gay who uses that strategy to amazing effect in his second book, Bringing Down the Shovel. In fact, if you're in need of an antidote to sadness, you can't do better than his latest book titled (wonderfully) An Unabashed Catalog of Gratitude. You can never do better than reading Ross Gay unless, of course, you're reading Larry Levis. 

I've still got some prompts to see to, but my stack is running low. So if you'd like a poem of your very own, go here and leave me a note with your donation.