STEPHANIE BARBÉ HAMMER

Remember

How he
Hoarded the Vogue magazines
Stacked like cord wood in
The green long pantry.
That was a sign.
The rusted scissors
One long blade broken in half;
The grimy rubber bands stretched
Around an envelope;
The short hardly holdable
Pencils sharpened unevenly
With a knife;
All signs but I
Couldn’t read them I just
Thought he was a cheap eccentric
Patting the slices of butter pats
Back onto the
Stick after every elegant
Dinner with the red flower china and
Heavy silver:
Habits formed by
Poverty. I didn’t recognize
Them under the glare of so
Many chandeliers.

Ok I admit it

Queen Camilla pisses me off
Charles too but there’s nothing we can do
About him
He was always inevitable
But this one? Avoidable.
Those two are every inch
A pain in my ass:
Dishonest
Mediocre
Mean
I hope they’re cold in those drafty
Castles.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a 7-time Pushcart Prize nominee in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She is the author of three poetry collections, two novels, a novelette, a new novella, and a how to write magical realism craft book. Originally from Manhattan, Stephanie moved to California in 1986, and except for a 7 year break in the PNW, has lived here ever since. She loves palm trees, eavesdropping and walking to coffee.