DAYS OF ABSENCE

by Royal Rhodes

Trump’s promise of mass deportation throws undocumented Texans into fear, uncertainty. —Texas Public Radio, December 19, 2024

Was I asleep and missed the sudden Rapture

that took the nameless with familiar faces?

Where did they go, with all the little ones?

The guy who cut the hair of homeless Vets,

the smiling pizza boy, and couriers?

Our well-trimmed gardens are now overgrown.

Produce at the market costs much more—

no strawberries for even ready money.

And who will take our dogs for daily walks?

These days of absence seem so rude at best.

Are we supposed to give Grandma a bath?

She knew the helper more than she knows us.

Are they on retreat deep in the desert

in prayer and fasting from all food and water?

In church they took with us the bread and wine,

but sat apart or stood beside the door.

Have angels raised them up to Paradise?

Was it the Rapture or some plotted rupture?

Royal Rhodes is a poet whose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including several times in The New Verse News.

PROFESSIONS DURING OUR WORLD'S CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Coalition for the Homeless

                there are thousands of gaping holes now
                and there will be too many more
                spaces once filled with art music love
                such a long list of griefs
                a census list too long
                doctors
                nurses
                parents
                friends
                priests
                                     sisters
                          as well as the other invisible
                                     hospital cleanup crews
                sanitation workers
                                     truckers
                stock boys
                cashiers of every stripe
                then there is the government’s own:
                the workers of neither rain or shine
                delivering our mail
                                     those who served
                                     the never counted away invisible
                the homeless addicts prisoners . . .
                each and every empty space
                a sterling silver invitation
                a call  a challenge
                to those who will come after
                                     to fill these gaping holes
                with the sacred earth of their lives

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. is a certified spiritual director whose poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals as well as four anthologies. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless (Press 53) was published in 2015.