To my mother, on the day of her retirement party

By DS Maolalai

--

what will they do without you there

tomorrow? likely the same things

they'd do if you'd stayed.

if the whole place were going

to fall into pieces

it would fall down then on you as well.

go to athens – why not? they have reasonable fish

at what I've heard are reasonable prices. go to italy too. we won't miss you

because I know that you'll call. there is more in this world

than a cleanly typed personnel

document. I can't count

the amount of times I've thought about going myself.

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Author Bio:

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)