Bob MacLaughlin
Their smiles shatter
and they utter that pitying "ohhh..."
when I tell them
Pop has Alzheimer's
as if he's afflicted with tragedy
not just faulty wiring
as if there's no way he and I
could have laughed our guts out
the other day when we heard
that giant clunking noise
and he jammed the brakes on,
bellowing,
"What the hell was that?!"
and I got out to look up and down
the street but found nothing
until I caught his cane in the act
of running away again, it having slid
down from moon roof
and hooked itself around the ham radio
antenna on the trunk, wagging
like the tail of a mischievous dog.
More info on Faulty Wiring at Moon Pie Press
Link to an interview with MacLaughlin on WABI
MacLaughlin wrote Faulty Wiring in tribute to his father Wilson Furness "Bud" MacLaughlin.
In addition to writing poetry, MacLaughlin has been a newspaper sportswriter, magazine editor, and advertising copywriter for print and broadcast. He once wrote a column decrying the outrageously high price of ringside Ali-Frazier tickets ($25). He likes writing poems because you can make up whatever you want, and you don't have to worry about deadlines (unless you agree to a book) or pleasing your client's relatives. Bob has lived fulltime in midcoast Maine since 1979 and aspires to be a native.
