A Pre-Owned Wonderwind Professional Hair Dryer

Retails for $12

By Jon Riccio

My mother worries I inherited her
tachycardia. Has me
using a pedometer
to the library or shopping center.
We jewel a peppermill with pill bottle brinks.
 
Lumpectomy day— 
I bring photos of her parents, wallet-sized
watchovers. A pathology vial later,
they go into her dresser. Washcloth,
remission, cedar chest.
 
Mom’s first hair dye, when I was fourteen
after weeks of viola in Australia.
Koala brunette.
Our orchestra’s fundraiser,
selling jack o’ lantern garbage
 
bags. My mother’s pumpkin carvings,
candles through gourd-gap teeth.
Her favorite worry: conflagrations
from luminary charities. Failed pinecones
 
shadow crafting wax. Frills cut from pillow-
cases guarantee a tree skirt more tactile.
Asbestos once called hair dryers
flammable’s amicable. I’ve prayed
 
at buffets larger than hospital chapels,
peddled October but cannot gene counsel a fireplace.

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I Amass

By Jon Riccio

a cabinet’s thumb drives and yearbooks
(Manistee High 1961 - 1970),
bushels of table leaves,
dolloped coppertops.
Suitcase wheels in meatloaf pans,
corn skewers for a city block,
safety gloves from my sister the auto plant
sales rep—Daimler drillers on knuckle sprees.
 
The free library receives my Beat Poet hardcovers.
Our couch seats tax returns and LPs
Aerosmith to Edvard Grieg,
Casey Kasem long distancing mountain hall kings.
Movers’ bills of lading.
Layering.
Lairing.
The closet’s plastic on plastic, a carbon fleur-de-lis.
 
Because my parents need a new faith
system, the air-quality tester microns a meme.
Our stuff’s big-picture purpose
percussive bubble wrap.
Hoardingest. Hoardingly.
Compulsion honeymoons a knickknack.
 
Last Sunday, when you were maybe church,
I excised cobweb buildup, googled varnish of the 1950s.
How much harm can a wet toothbrush do?
The keepsake, homily-immune.
Large-print religious fiction, a regifted Galilee,
 
tin plate changemaking a garage sale’s theses.
Two hundred single bills for time’s old sake.
Break your fifty with this letter-opener septet?
Repository, a den ideally.
 
Giveaway verité:
Never drop off what you can basement today.

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Labrador Apostle

By Jon Riccio

​“Saint Jerome lived with a community / Of souls in a stone house. / He had a donkey and a young lion.”

                            —Norman Dubie, “Elegy for Wright and Hugo”

My bedroom door always had that angel impression, 
oak misbehaving as wings. What Catholic wouldn’t 
 
find divinity in belt rack or balsa, recommending
that Dubie poem to students nuzzling a rosary.
 
The church I attend on Greasewood Street, twenty 
minutes from my Tucson apartment. Contemplate 
 
Christ driving in, regret yourself vrooming out. 
Afterwards, the butteriest chorizo and crèche hay. 
 
The animal blessing Mass, my favorite: Corgis
barking incense, Dobermans for every Assisi crease.
 
Watching a tiny-house documentary, I contemplate 
a big-cat dwellmate, mudroom growl area. Dewclaws
 
gospely. Noah, the doubling is taxonomy soldering
confessional booth screens. The kenneled narthex
 
not lost on this lapsed. What holiness hasn’t
had its shard stakes raised by Canaan jay?

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Healthcare Address

By Jon Riccio

​An estate-planning ad reminds me of my unfulfilled wish to open a chandelier
bazaar. Easily, I could entrepreneur by channeling the corded coffee pot his mother
 
brings to recital receptions. Yes, I’m reacting to her chronic kidney disease.
No, I’ve not disassembled a chandelier to clean it bulb, brass, ohm.
 
Mother, sodium-watching and walking the high school’s indoor track,
its gymnasium glued to the bio/chemistry classrooms—their wash
 
station blankets, pop-quiz e coli. CKD, Mom acronyms in emails.
I’m chef but don’t throw out the curly Fritos. Entertainment?
 
The stethoscope coiled inside a tambourine. For Sale:
a dialysis-shaped chandelier. Similar volt events guess
 
the temperature of a retention pond. The renal care
center resides in a two-billionaire zip code. Purgatory,
 
you’d do better with a bitumen candelabrum.
The ornate have samovar-level wakes.

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Aptitude

By Jon Riccio

Like powdered milk discerning its best friend
was the mailbox, some iambs should never— 
 
Play-Doh romcom— 
 
frangible the new tangible
per beauty magazines of the bi-valvous.
 
Campus parking officer, all day you spend snapping plates— 
a neighborhood’s SLOW DOWN! turtles, exigency equivalence.
  
Careers I should have: toy morgue attendant,
sensory deprivation ascot countering hermitage detergent.
 
Ash commutes to the urn. Waffle irons face extinction.
Doldrums, but an emery board knows worse.

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​Jon Riccio teaches literature and creative writing at Western Michigan University and the University of West Alabama. A past Lambda Poetry Fellow, his most recent chapbook, The Orchid in Lieu of a Horse, was published by Seven Kitchens Press.