The poem that Boxcar Poetry Review published and will be included in the 2011 Best of the Net Anthology has a companion piece:
After the “Rumors” Poem, I Drive Very Carefully
Because wouldn’t it be a kick in the ass to die
the day after I wrote the last one? Someone
at my funeral, no doubt a poet, would sparkle
with the irony. “She must have known,”
he’d say at the podium. “She was saying
goodbye.” What I was saying, honestly,
was Thanks, kids, for letting me mine your
fragile, tiny psyches. I spend the day peering
skyward for falling pianos, off-course planes,
friendly fire, the usual calamities. Keep tabs
on the town ambulance. Check twice
in the crosswalks. Chew food with care.
Slow down the body, breath and heart,
the rate of cell die-off, the usual skin sloughing,
I don’t even have to pee until the afternoon.
Twice I cross train tracks, think this
could be it. Clutch the rail in the shower.
And then think: what if it is my last day?
I could say yes to the charities and blood drives.
Burn my reading list, my tepid writing idea.
Cook dinner for my family, something nice. Play
the kid-chasing game, join them on the trampoline.
And if I live into the evening, knowing it’s my last,
what a glorious sunset, unless it is cloudy,
when I will say what glorious clouds.
Karen Skolfield 