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.

HOW TO

by Bonnie Naradzay

"Zeus the Blind Owl" The original watercolor painting is by Artist Sinclair Stratton.

This morning we loaded cardboard boxes of vegetables
into the trunks of cars. In each box, we put a card:
"How to: Broccoli," in tiny print, one side in Spanish.
How to choose fresh broccoli. But it had been chosen.

Families stayed in cars for hours in July's fierce heat.
In church we have prayed for the virus to go away.
You can buy human remains pouches on Amazon.
The zipper locks are guaranteed to keep the liquid in.

A man in the car line going up the hill stood outside,
bent over his battered Dodge Caravan, hood up, trunk held
in place with Bungee cords. Steam rose from the radiator.
The Great Pretender said he'd save the statue of Christ in Rio.

Last week, no form, no advice on Broccoli. Today,
to receive the USDA box, they must fill out a form:
name, address, the number in each family group.
The rule: one box per family, no matter how many.

How to eat it raw with a dip, how to stir fry, steam.
But we have seven in our family, one man pleaded.
Our group gave him two. A small boy waved at us
from the back seat.  I saw the careful handwriting,

apartments disclosed, streets, so painstakingly done,
 all for a box of surplus white mushrooms, broccoli,
head of iceberg lettuce.... Some boxes sagged.
There’s a Gaelic name for victims of bubonic plague

entombed in an Irish burial mound.  A plague hill.
Who sees the forms? One woman said, "We are illegal.
We don't want to put our names down on anything."
The young man in the passenger seat looked ahead.

In church we now regard the virus as a wake-up call.
I nodded, put two boxes in the trunk of her small blue car
that sputtered, set to break down.  Mute me on Zoom.
The Pharisees held out for handwashing, we were told.

The virus wants our lungs. Hart Island is our Potters Field.
Camus said we are owls blinded by too much light.
She told us the truth, and the truth will set us free.
Then my eyes stung; I could hardly see.

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared most recently in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), Kenyon Review Online, RHINO, EPOCH, The Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, TheNewVerse.News, Ekphrastic Review, One; and poems are slated to appear later this year in AGNI and others.  In 2017 she graduated from St John’s College (the Graduate Institute), in Annapolis, Maryland.  For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless (Miriam’s Kitchen) and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.