~
Old Fan
Thirty years on, you still remind me
I didn’t oil the fan you once let me take
from your basement supply. How, on return, it suffered
a gravelly rattle. How the ball bearings were obviously
shot. Could have burned out the motor, you say
as you plug in that same fan today.
I shrug. Smile. Pass you the salad.
Did you ever talk to me about motors, how
and when to apply oil? Did we share hours
mending old appliances while you asked me
about school? I never saw you
making rounds of the house, tool box ready
to tend an off-sound. Well, maybe you meant to
send me off to my first rented room with a gift
of my very own oil can, the kind Dorothy used
for the Tin Man. But I couldn’t know the sound
of what I’d never heard. And now
here we are, eating lunch, your hearing shot,
your voice gone gravelly. You still haven’t shown me
the inner workings of old fans.
I’ve never oiled one, don’t think I ever will.
~
Jennifer L Freed
Jennifer L Freed’s poetry has appeared in various print and on-line journals including Atlanta Review, Atticus Review, Worcester Review, and Zone 3. Her chapbook, These Hands Still Holding, was a finalist in the 2013 New Women’s Voices Contest. Her first full length collection When Light Shifts, will be published in the spring of 2022. Awards include the 2020 Samuel Washington Allen Prize for her poem sequence “Cerebral Hemorrhage.”