Last Hurrah

Lately I’ll buy something and think
This is probably the last one of these
I’ll ever buy. Last suitcase, last
can opener. So I begin this poem. Then
Last Mattress by Marilyn Nelson appears
in my inbox, and it’s so great I think
Well, there goes another one.

On the other hand, this might be the last
decent idea I have for a poem so I better
keep going. But now I’m stuck so I read
Nelson’s poem again. Did you notice
that the last word is hope? Do you think
her mattress was actually made of feathers?
Hope is the thing with the feathers?

I’m feeling pretty smart until I read her
About This Poem blurb which talks about
Dickinson and now I feel hopeless, exactly
like Charlie Brown after he buys his little
Christmas tree and Peppermint Patty says
You’re hopeless, Charlie Brown and Frieda adds
for good measure Completely hopeless

just because his tree’s not aluminum.
I recently bought an artificial tree myself –
I was tired of the whole ritual of buying
a live one every year, plus I think I read
that live trees are actually worse
for the environment (?) – so anyway,
yeah, last Christmas tree.

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Bill Hollands’ work has been featured on The Slowdown podcast and has appeared in such journals as The Greensboro Review, The Adroit Journal, Rattle, DIAGRAM, North American Review, and Boulevard. He was recently named a finalist for New Ohio Review’s NORward Prize and Smartish Pace’s Erskine J. Poetry Prize. He lives in Seattle with his husband and their son.