Dear Man Who Mugged My Grandmother

a severed sonnet

Her age 78
but she would have told you 75
and gotten away with it, such smooth skin.

You didn’t ask,
grabbed first and shoved her to the concrete,
got away with her Social Security check.

There are 14 bones in the human face.
You broke 6 of them stomping your feet
on her head.

You didn’t ask but their names are
Mandible, Mandible, Maxilla, Maxilla, Vomer,
Zygomatic bone.

I want to know your name as I know your
considerable desperation. Hers was Sarah.

(she used to sing to me)

Forgetting Needs No Forgiveness

When everyone who knows me is gone,
I will be well and truly gone, but for a few
short years after my body’s passing, I’ll be

a stranger’s familiar face on the crowded train
platform, wide forehead and button nose,

my beloved black current cologne wafting in
on storm currents brewing from the east,

the idiosyncratic way a cashier twirls locks of hair
around pointer finger, forward, then back again,

a neighbor girl’s identically off-key rendition
of Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” and that wee

tiny itch behind my husband’s ear, he scratches
slowly, forgetting what it was he wanted to recall,
will also be me, but he won’t ever know it.

Lana Hechtman Ayers leads generative writing workshops in the Amherst method, helps poets assemble their own collections, facilitates a Zoom Poetry Book Club, and manages three poetry presses: Concrete Wolf, MoonPath Press, and World Enough Writers. Architect of the “severed sonnet” form, her poems appear in such places as Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, The MacGuffin, and Verse Daily. Author of eight full-length poetry collections, the most recent are: When All Else Fails (May 2023) and Overtures (September 2023). The Autobiography of Rain is forthcoming from Fernwood Press, September 2024. She’s also published Time Flash: Another Me, a romantic time travel novel. A sequel is in the works.