Saturday, August 28, 2021

Waiting for the Uber at the Assisted Living Facility by Sharon Waller Knutson

Those Ukrainians really know
how to satisfy a sweet tooth,

says the man with the gray beard.
The honey in the Koliva tastes
heavenly and the fruit filled
Koliva is to die for. Five stars for sure.


But the hostess’s hair was a disaster.
She looked like Little Orphan Annie
at 100 years old,
states a woman
with wrinkles deep as ditches
and hair blue as the cloudless sky.
The Shepherd’s Pie at the shindig
for the shaggy Scottish gal was delish.


Who can forget the roast pork and cabbage
at the celebration for the bald guy
with the bushy eyebrows from Estonia?

she adds while the beard brags;
The ham glazed with orange juice
and brown sugar at the gala
for the burly Brit was the best.


How do we get an invitation
to these fancy dinner parties?

the white poodle frizz asks.
No invitation necessary, blue hair
replies as the Uber pulls up.
Just read the obituaries. The foreigners
serve the best funeral food.




Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in a wildlife habitat in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields by Flutter Press and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Her work has also appeared in various journals, most recently in One Art, Mad Swirl, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review and The Song Is…

6 comments:

  1. This is hilarious! Sharon knows how to do dialogue in poems.

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  2. poignant, well done--food is a metaphor for so much!

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  3. Sharon knows how to nail the telling detail. I always stop to read her poems.

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  4. Sharon is a great field observer of two-legged wildlife.

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  5. Yay Sbaron! More fun characters brought vividly to life.

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  6. I'm familiar with the food at an assisted living facilty and I curiously read through the poem, more and more bewildered by these convincing voices, until the perfect ending arrived. I love Sharon's depictions.

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