Cooking Dinner For Mom
by Michael Buckius
One time I hung honesty in the window
It was red and pure
The neighbors refused to go inside for a long time
When they finally reconsidered, I was able to cook my mother dinner
It made sense, they were all scared
but the only food that truly tastes like divorce is frozen pizza
and I wasn’t going to make that for my mother
Every neighborhood has a plan
and each house is designed to hold
only so much emptiness
Sometimes a broken family unit
will turn their stereo up very loud
Even though the neighbors know they are being lied to
they file a noise complaint instead of listening to a solid playlist
Then, they hang heavy curtains that never move
not even by hurricane-force winds
They don’t realize that the windows are the eyes of a house
and therefore qualify for all appropriate eye metaphors
But yeah, I cooked my mother dinner
and actually, no one else was invited
Michael Buckius is a writer, filmmaker, and educator from Lancaster, PA. He earned his undergraduate degree in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, and his MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. His work has appeared in Triquarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Quarter After Eight, and Ghost City Review, among others. He currently teaches at Arizona State University and lives in Phoenix. His debut full-length poetry collection Mustache in Plain Sight was released in March 2022 by Tolsun Books.