SHORTAGE

by Tara Menon

The Boston Globe states
there’s a shortage of breast biopsy needles 
in the nation, the result of a recall.
Doctors need to conserve their supply.
Breast cancer diagnoses are delayed. 
 
We mustn’t sprout cancer cells 
at least until the end of March.
Better yet, we must remain healthy 
our entire lives while science
invents ways to cure or prevent diseases.
 
What do we do about shortages
when the Strait of Hormuz closes
or when nations hoard supplies as weapons of wars
or when global warming results in more pandemics,
overwhelming hospitals to prioritize surgeries,
or when doctors are forced to turn down patients
or when the cost of insurance swells to smother us?
What then?
 
None of those scenarios have to happen, you know.
The worst enemy is the shrug of shoulders.

Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a two-time finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Her latest poems are forthcoming or have appeared in AMPLIFY (Sheila-Na-Gig), The Sucharnochee Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Chaotic Merge Magazine, and Grey Sparrow Journal.

THE RIDE

by Alejandro Escudé

Mason Lowe was one of the top bull riders in the country—a beloved, witty 25-year-old from rural Missouri at the peak of his powers. But inside the Denver Coliseum at the National Western Stock Show on Tuesday night, a bucking bull—the animal he built his entire life around—threw Lowe off and stomped on his chest. Lowe died later that night. —The Denver Post, January 17, 2019

The ride is dust and time, the bull above
the fray—Hard Times, the cowboy mounts
the hide a dozen times in three, each shove
the very last, the ticks like stolen counts
from bitter breaths, the man furloughed from earth,
a sarsaparilla moon, a jackknifed life,
the thunder-gong he heard, a fierce word,
followed-paradise, a shredded loaf
of human bread, Lowe winked at God and died,
his hat still on his shimmering ghost,
the monster’s hooves, a monster to us all,
made creation’s hole within his burning breast.
A man, a nation’s pride, the towering fall.
Let Mason fly, bull-twisted, hand in a rope
for eight: one half alive one half in hope.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.