Today I want to be like Gerald Stern

by Ellen Stone

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Today I want to be like Gerald Stern 
For my mom, Patricia Christoforo Stone

It is raining in December; the dog is licking pink off the street. Someone threw away a card of people lined up in their finery. It’s lying in a puddle, and they are getting drenched. My friend wants to fax someone to find someone to locate platelets for someone who’s sick. Drops of rain are falling on my coat which is not waterproof, and my boots are not quite rain boots, but they will have to do. My girls, who might as well be women, are gathering for breakfast but it’s almost lunchtime and we forgot to put the garbage cans out on the curb. I want to find the meaning in the moment, but the leaves are matted rust and brown, the grass a strange conglomeration of straw and sage and almost spring. I miss my mother, a kind of strange fury like a small tornado in my chest. The recycling truck is flying by. I’m not quite sure where it goes — but I want to go there too — recycle this whole year, make it useful yet again. The dog is ever hopeful and her nose a kind of sieve. What’s good, what’s old, who’s been here just before us, what’s worth grabbing hold of, ingesting for the pleasure of the smell. Here the UPS driver waves at me as I’m walking up Patricia and it’s kind of like she’s back.

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Ellen Stone advises a high-school poetry club, co-hosts a poetry series, Skazat! and edits Public School Poetry in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her latest collection is Everybody Wants to Keep the Moon Inside Them (Mayapple Press, 2025). Ellen’s poems have appeared recently in Third Coast, Dunes Review, Michigan Quarterly Review Mixtape, and Artemis. She is the recipient of a Good Hart Artist Writer Friends Residency. Ellen’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net.

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