by Rich Glinnen

For my mom

Nothing gets lost at my mother’s house,
but, of course, on the one-year anniversary
of my grandma’s passing,
my mother’s slipper vanishes
and doesn’t return until the next morning,
as if my grandma found her daughter’s slipper
in the one spot children can’t see,
and placed it—not with the other
less adventurous slipper on the stairs,
where its reappearance
might have been deemed an oversight,
but out in the open, beside the sewing kit,
where, if it were any closer,
it would’ve jumped up and bit you.

Best of the Net nominee Rich Glinnen has had his poetry featured on Rich Vos’s and Bonnie McFarlane’s podcast My Wife Hates Me, and is a mainstay at the Nuyorican Poets Café. His work can be read in various print and online journals, as well as on his Tumblr and Instagram pages. He currently has two cats, two kids, and one wife.