Loss Prevention Specialists
Some penguins build their nests on piles of rocks and
partners exchange gifts of stones. You ask for jelly beans
every time I visit, cookies, as if life has lost its sweetness.
Like a bewitched pregnant woman, so strange are you,
with your cravings, the wrong sex, and way too old.
You used to call me “Sweets.” I deny you
nothing. My father always told me, “It’s no good to be alone.”
While mother kept repeating, “Learn to type, so you’ll have
something to fall back on.” If she didn’t like my boyfriend
it was simply, “Play the field,” or when I went out
a whispered, “Have you got your Mad Money?”
Had she told me things she never did, things she wished
she’d done to lay the breadcrumbs? Stones in moonlight?
Meanwhile, in a case of utter irony, Dad was an insurance
salesman. I had a friend who volunteered to help install
exhibits in a gallery where we worked side by side, talking,
laughing. She told me that she thought a white panel van
with veggies pictured on the side was some covert
operation, it passed by so many times each day. We called
nothing something. Imbued it with menace,
omen. It was all fun and games. Until it wasn’t,
really. Years later I’d still find myself shaking my head
remembering this, long after she moved away. But then
I started seeing a different white van, over and over and
everywhere, painted: “Loss Prevention Specialists.” I told myself
that surely they installed alarms, but every time I saw the truck,
I thought: Well wouldn’t it be great? Put them on speed-dial
for your loved one’s cancer diagnosis, a break-up,
a death. The last time I left you I thought, next time I’ll ask you
about the difference between jackdaw and crow. Wondering
if I should tell you, in your fragile state, that the Montana
brookies and rainbows are in steep decline. Knowing no
poultice, no tincture, no prayer could save you. No
garlic necklace. But I ask myself now, what cause
for alarm? So useless are we all against the leaving.
The hummingbird’s heart races 20 beats per second,
wings fly in the symbol of infinity, and just so,
I raced to you that Tuesday, too late. I pass the black
cows, all lying down, on the long drive home alone.
About the Author: Artist/poet Mary Kathryn Jablonski is most recently author of “Sugar Maker Moon,” from Dos Madres Press. Her poems and collaborative video/poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, exhibitions, screenings and film festivals, including Atticus Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Film Live (UK), Poetry Ireland Review (IRE), Quarterly West, and Salmagundi, among others. She was recently awarded a NYSCA Individual Artist’s Grant in Poetry to complete a video/poem “chapbook” and is Senior Editor in Visual Art at Tupelo Quarterly.
Image Credit: Andrew Gray “Jelly Beans Held in Cupped Hand” (2008) CC BY-SA 3.0 Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
As It Ought To Be 
