BITTER APPLE

Since my printer died last month
(at Christmas, I’m told),
his wife has not emptied his ashtray.
He chain smoked Pall Malls,
dumping ashes on the floor,
butts covering the Farmers Insurance insignia
in the bottom of the cheap tin dish.
Everything dirty and broken,
this is precisely the sort of place
people die from.
Piles of dusty tabloids and printing periodicals
that have not been sorted in years.
A bottle of Formula 44 lying
face down beside his radio.
In the back room an oak cupboard for hot type,
which I would like to have,
each letter assigned its own drawer.
His thick edition of The New Webster
Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language,
Including Synonyms with gold-leafed pages,
left open on its carved stand
page 162: colquintida
bitter apple.
This is exactly the kind of life
people die from.
His chair pushed under the desk,
which I need to order and clean
as some sort of memorial,
upon it sits a bouquet someone has sent,
a cheap vase with miniature white roses
and baby’s breath.