No Casseroles
by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue

Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue is an essayist, poet, short story writer, and high school English-as-a-Second Language teacher, living in obscurity in beautiful Fort Worth, Texas. When he's not teaching, he's usually writing. Most recently he has had poems published in Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair: Best of the Texas Poetry Calendar, redriverreview.com, Illya's Honey, and The Texas Observer.

Besides that, his essays have appeared in The Texas Observer, The San Antonio Express-News, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Dallas Peace Times, and The Fort Worth Weekly. Finally, stories of his have been published in Lynx Eye, Hardboiled, and the on-line literary journals Scrivener's Pen, SouthLit.com, Verdad.com, and The Write Room.

For godsakes, don't bring any casseroles over.
Send no condolences.
I hate Hallmark with a passion!

Just come and cry with me,
forgetting all we were taught about being men!
Let's weep like professional mourners
in full-throated despair.

Let's leap on that overpriced casket.
Let stop its steep drop beyond memory.
Let's mourn her death,
and her life (a more pitiful life I've never known).

Let's scream until the moon rises,
a stupid, cockeyed grin in an empty sky.

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