T. S. ELIOT’S FIRST WASTE LAND

by Susan Terris

Cabanne Spring, Forest Park: vintage undated image with unidentified children from the archives of Louis (1907-1999) & Georgia (1918-2009) Buckowitz via Urban Review: St. Louis.

—The Waste Land poem is 100 years old this month.

Twit twit twit... turn of the century, it's 1900, and Tom

born in St. Louis, not yet known as T. S., found his first
waste land: Forest Park, 1,371 acres of countryside.

In the middle of the city, wild but with street cars:
an amusement park and a steam-driven carousel
(yes, that 1944 Meet Me in St. Louie whirlabout).
 
Both Tom and my Nanna Edna, almost the same age,
lived nearby on one side of the park. Did they meet? 
Jug jug jug... Maybe not, and yet I begin to see
 
them one day on the carousel when he and Edna
were both eleven: Tom, in a tan jacket and hat, 
riding the lead horse with roses around its neck,
 
smiling down at her—a girl in white organza, in
the white swan chariot. Perhaps. But what came next?
Oh   jug jug jug  Tom left St. Louis, went to Harvard.
 
Edna stayed, went to Fontbonne, a teachers college,
studied math, grammar, poetry, was the first woman
(or man) in our big family with a college degree.
 
Shantih   shantih   shantih   A hundred years passed:
Nanna Edna gone. T. S. Eliot gone and yet still there. 
The Waste Land, a mystery, kismet, a search for selves

Susan Terris is a freelance editor and the author of 7 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, and 2 plays. Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Denver Quarterly, The New Verse News, and Ploughshares. Poems of hers have appeared in Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry. Her newest book is Dream Fragments, which won the Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal.

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

 by Mary K O’Melveny

“Vaccine Wheel of Fortune” by JMbucholtz at Deviant Art.

               In the Circle of Life

                    It's the wheel of fortune

                    It's the leap of faith

                    It's the band of hope

                    Till we find our place…

—“The Circle of Life” (Lyrics by Tim Rice)

No one wants to be the last woman down before the cure.

So everyone is staring at computer screens, leaning into

laptops, cradling cell phones. Legions of faithful vaccine

seekers are as determined as El Camino de Santiago pilgrims.

Or would-be buyers of Hamilton tickets back when Broadway

was still open.  There are waiting lists, rumors, promises.

Appointments made, then cancelled. Lines form, disband.

Recorded messages say don’t call us, we’ll call you.

 

Everyone is at risk. But not enough to be advanced to more

fortunate categories. We reside in data bases far and wide.

We’ve filled out forms as if they were lottery tickets, sent

every scrap of personal data to would-be hackers around

the globe, called doctors we’ve not seen in years, even searched

for fake college IDs that might jump us to new age brackets.

Some neighbors raced to appointments in neighborhoods they

had never seen, forgetting who the odds had already disfavored.

 

As usual, the privileged see serendipity. Everyone else

knows how often the game is rigged. Kismet is a figment.

The carnival barker is gone but his fabrications linger

like smoke from a cheap cigar. Even as chilled vials traverse

the highways like pilgrim caravans, new viral strains mutate,

shapeshift. Before all our waiting arms are raised, half a million

will likely die. So we click and call and cry for our chance

at good fortune. Once again, Lady Luck smiles, then disappoints.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.