Claudia M. Stanek
Claudia M. Stanek’s work has been turned into a libretto, has been part of an art exhibition, and has been translated into Polish. Her poems have been published in her chapbooks Beneath Occluded Shine and Language You Refuse to Learn as well as in Susurrus, The Windhover, Cutleaf, Ekstasis, Solum, and Book of Matches, among others. She holds an MFA from Bennington College. Claudia resides in East Tennessee.
Irrelevant
The days are long for Wisdom
who sits in her stiff chair
after breakfast, placed there
by her dressers and feeders,
her useless hands set in her lap,
a call button pinned to her
chest. Inside, her heart pounds
a little too slowly, irregular,
like the loves she had
when she could still turn
the pages of The Tempest
though she preferred more bawdy
Chaucer to Shakespeare.
The day aide who cleans her
in her private shame
heard of Canterbury on TV
when the Queen died,
some priest from there?
but has no time for reading.
Wisdom can’t not hear the TV
blare through the days
though her ears aren’t
what’s aged her. She wishes
someone would shut
the noise off, that she could
smolder in her hard-won
irrelevance until the night carer
comes to change her—
as if something could change
in the nursing home—
to put her to bed, all while
calling her Honey, maybe
handling Wisdom’s bruised
useless limbs a little more
gently for once, maybe
even listening to Wisdom
when she asks the aide if he likes
Poe. And when he answers
no, there’s nothing to like
about being poor…
lights out, door shut.
