ZENO IN AMERICA

by Dale Wisely

A Black teenager was shot in the head by a white homeowner in Kansas City, Mo., after showing up at the wrong house to pick up his siblings, lawyers for his family said. Family members identified the victim online as Ralph Pual Yarl, a 16-year-old high school junior. You can contribute to a GoFundMe to help pay for the boy’s hospital bills.

 

Imagine a bullet approaching its target. It may help to think in slow motion. Let’s say it’s seven inches away from impact. No, let’s say eight because it is important for us to be able to divide readily. No pesky fractions. Haven’t we had enough fractions? Eight inches and... slow that bullet way down. Before it reaches skin, layers rich in capillaries, then skull... but if you’d rather think of, say, a sheet of drywall, that will do. So do. Do think of drywall.

 

Before the bullet makes contact it must pass the four-inch mark. Then the two-inch mark; then it’s just an inch away from, let’s say, plywood. Sheet metal. Or a STOP sign on a rural road. We can’t avoid fractions after all. When we keep dividing, we get fractions.

 

Then one-half inch. Then a quarter inch. Almost there. But next is the last one-eight inch. Stop there. Or halfway from there to the target. It doesn't matter where you stop. Just stop. Wherever you stop, think of that as a place where nothing is struck. Where the space left to travel is nothing and everything. Where nothing is pierced, shattered, ended. Where everything is as it was. This is a place where things go so fast and have so little space remaining and so little time left. Where a thing is about to happen but never does. I’m trying to say that this is a place where the skin remains intact and blood is retained in vessels, and bone unshattered. 

Dale Wisely runs Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press, publisher of the journals Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Unlost, Unbroken, duality, and first frost.

CORONA

by Dale Wisely

Daffodil corona by Nick Harris

                           1

Crown of stars

Corona

The rarefied gaseous envelope
          of stars, our sun

Unfathomable halo,
           obscured by the relentless
           blaze of plasma, hydrogen, and helium

Only a perfect eclipse—
          miracle of astronomic alignment—
          permits us a glimpse
          of the pearly glow
          flaring out from the black disk
          of the superimposed moon

                          2

Crown of thorns

We take care not to confuse
          illness with death,
          or melancholy with mourning

Now our sickness and our death
          seem inseparable and
          we are blind to the distinction

And in these days
          depression and grief
          run along parallel lines
          and converge on the horizon

          under a crown of flames
          under a crown of glory


                   3

Crown of flowers

Corona

Shaped like a cup or a trumpet,
     the flared center of the common daffodil

amaryllis     paperwhite    triandrus      narcissus  

a perennial: it flowers, dies—

but the gardener does not say it dies,
          she says it “dies back”

It is time to sort our sickness from our death

Die back and grow again another year

Author’s Note: Some of the language in part 1 is from the Google dictionary entry for “corona.” Howie Good contributed the “crown of …” phrases.

Dale Wisely runs Ambidextrous Bloodhound which publishes four journals: Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Unbroken, and Unlost.  His chapbook Seven Stars is out in April 2020.

SCHOOLYARD RETORT WITH 14 LETTERS:

a found poem by Dale Wisely

i

Putin would rather have
a puppet as president. 

No puppet, no puppet.

And it's pretty clear --

You're the puppet.

It's pretty clear you won't admit —

No, you're the puppet.

ii

For the clue schoolyard retort
you can find ten possible solutions. 

Schoolyard retort with 4 letters

AMSO ISSO

Schoolyard retort with 5 letters

AMTOO ARESO CANSO IAMSO ISNOT ISTOO

Schoolyard retort with 6 letters

ARENOT  YOUARE

Sources: Transcript of 3rd Clinton-Trump debate; Crossword Solutions Dictionary.

Dale Wisely edits Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, and White Knuckle Chapbooks.