AMERICAN HERO

by Dawn Corrigan

Officer Daniel Hodges gained notoriety after footage of him circulated being crushed by a door during the capitol riots. Photo: CNN via WCVB.

Dawn Corrigan has a crush on an American hero.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

by Dawn Corrigan

At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror: A new report calculates the number of people who fled because of wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.—The New York Times, September 8, 2020. Photo: A Somali woman carried wood to make a shelter in a camp for internally displaced people in December 2018. Credit: Mohamed Abdiwahab/Agence France-Presse —Getty Images via The New York Times.

   Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation
   can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely
   under the influence of a great fear.
   —Bertrand Russell


Never forget, they say, as if we have a choice.
Never forget, as though we have minds
eager to comply with orders, willing recruits
dropping to give us twenty, standing guard duty,
lifting the mask to suck in gas and mutter
our rank and SSN. But the minds we have
are AWOL at least half the time, poor soldiers
dropping their guns in battle, abandoning plans,
neglecting the mission in favor of a story
about us and that high school crush,
or us and a pile of money,
or us and a bottle as big as the world.
We remember, but not because they say to.
We remember because our minds like chaos
even more than peace. They urge us to remember,
a wish they share with that other they, the they
who made Father close his blinds forever,
Mother shiver at the sight of every plane.

Dawn Corrigan is still waiting for the Age of Anxiety to end.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

by Dawn Corrigan

“Rat Race to the Meaning of Life” by Channing.

   I am waiting   for the Age of Anxiety   to drop dead   —Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "I Am Waiting" 1958

I keep hearing parents
fretting if they don't send
their children to school
they'll fall behind.

Parents, I bring you news:
The rat race is over.
The rats won.
Time for something else now.


Dawn Corrigan is waiting, too.

AVAILABLE BEDS

by Dawn Corrigan

The diorama simulates the rising and setting points of the Sun. —Stanford University

Like sunrise, like hurricanes,
it moved east to west.

We feared it was coming
for that hole in your chest.

You said, Perhaps I should meet it
while there's still open beds.

But we made you a fortress
and hid you instead.


Author’s Note: This poem is a response to my immunocompromised husband, who suggested a couple of weeks ago that perhaps he should deliberately seek exposure to the virus before our local ICUs filled up. For now he remains safe and our local hospitals are below capacity, though with public beaches and restaurants reopening, I don't know if we can expect this state of stasis to last.


Dawn Corrigan has a black belt in social distancing.

NO SPOILER ALERTS

by Dawn Corrigan

Young German adults hold “corona parties” and cough toward older people. A Spanish man leashes a goat to go for a walk to skirt confinement orders. From France to Florida to Australia, kitesurfers, college students and others crowd the beaches. . . . “Some consider they’re little heroes when they break the rules,” said French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner. “Well, no. You’re an imbecile, and especially a threat to yourself.” —PBS News Hour, March 22, 2020

Having a husband
with respiratory issues
leaves me no patience
for the kids who flooded
the beach on Spring Break,
peers who sneer it's
no worse than a flu,
Boomers who snap Don't ask
me to cancel my plans!
I have things to do!
But when I think
in terms of plot
I can almost understand.
We're used to the world
ending, or not,
in 90-minute increments
and even then I often
have to go online
and read a summary
before I can bear
to watch through
to the final scene
and learn whether
we'll divert the asteroid
or defuse the nuke
or develop a vaccine
in time.


Dawn Corrigan has a black belt in social distancing.

ALL CLEAR

by Dawn Corrigan

A sleepy morning in Pensacola
I'm almost an hour late
putting on the coffee
and bringing my husband his pills

he takes the dogs out
and I sit with my laptop
to look at social media
#naspensacola trending

the Naval Air Station
second largest of our area’s
many military bases
six miles south of us

I go out to tell him
four dead, one the shooter
eight others injured
including two sheriffs

we sit on the stoop
drinking our coffee
cloudy and 64 degrees
in Myrtle Grove today

the neighbors’ sycamore
is almost bare
and our walkways are
covered with oak leaves

though just as many
remain in the trees
one of the mysteries
of the heritage oaks

a disembodied male voice
fills the air
it bounces from the trees
reverberates and echoes

we know it’s from NAS
but can’t understand
what it says
then another voice speaks

the friendly female voice
that makes announcements
over the intercom
at Myrtle Grove Elementary

half a block away
we’re been listening to her
for three years
normally she’s calm

and soothing
an intercom champion
but there’s a new edge
in her voice today

“I wanted to let you know
we’re all clear
and you can take your students
out to play.

We’re all clear
and everything’s okay.
We’re all clear!
Everyone have a nice day.”


Dawn Corrigan works in the affordable housing industry in Pensacola, FL and serves as assistant editor at Otis Nebula.

NIGHTMARE IN UTAH

by Dawn Corrigan

A sign at an abortion-rights rally in Miami on Thursday. (Lynne Sladky/AP via The Washington Post, May 26, 2019

A particular kind of dystopia has arrived, and we’re beginning to see its fuzzy outlines. It would involve a whisper network on social media. It would entail announcing “Off to go see Navy Pier!” and then going instead to an abortion clinic. Thousands of women would have to learn—or remember—how this all worked before 1973, when desperate women also had occasion to visit their cousins, old friends, and aunties. —Monica Hesse, The Washington Post, May 26, 2019

Last week they closed the border
and ever since we've been on the run,
wearing black clothes, travelling at night,
food and water in packs on our backs.
We've arrived at the state line and stare
longingly into Nevada. The sentries
are scattered but they have a clear shot
at us here. We're not far from the railway.
I've heard they're stopping the passenger trains
but maybe we could hide in a freighter.
Given time and a lot of luck we might wake up
somewhere new, someplace with more rights
and bodily autonomy than we're used to.

Dawn Corrigan works in the affordable housing industry in Pensacola, FL and serves as assistant editor at Otis Nebula.

MPG

by Dawn Corrigan





For 6 years I didn’t own a car.
Then I bought a Jeep Cherokee.

It got 11 miles to the gallon.
As my friend Cameron said

when he took the job
at the missile factory

“I’m part of the problem now!”
Yet how quickly I settled

into driving again,
humming along

to Gnarls Barkley
on the 44-mile commute.

How the oil refineries
of North Salt Lake

glowed like enchanted castles
on the way home at night.

How snow packs formed
on the undercarriages

of the cars, then fell off
in blackened chunks

that dotted the highway
like sleeping birds.

How I imagined those birds
waking up, shaking the snow

from their feathers,
taking off for someplace else.


Dawn Corrigan's poetry and prose have appeared in a number of print and online journals, most recently at DIALOGIST, So to Speak, and Digital Americana.