INSOMNIA CHRONICLES XXVII

by Erin Murphy

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. I had to go to the laundromat last week because my washing machine was broken. Just a sock stuck in the drum, an easy fix. The repair guy said Whatever you do, don’t get rid of this beast—they don’t make ’em like this anymore. It’s 43 years old, came with the house. Now that I said this, it will surely die for good tomorrow. I met one of my best friends in a laundromat. Hadley, Massachusetts, summer before grad school. We got to chatting, and I said, Hey, I found a secret swimming hole. Wanna go? So we rode bikes through a farm field to a patch of sand on the Connecticut River. Back then laundromats were my only option. A pricier place in Mount Holyoke was also a bar. It had a clever name, like Suds & Duds or Wash & Slosh. Another in Amherst had a game room, so you could shoot pool or play pinball. I prefer a no-frills retro laundromat where strangers sit on plastic bucket chairs and watch the random choreography of shirts and pants. The suspended time when magic happens. Or did before cell phones. The repair guy says the key to my washer’s longevity is the center agitator. The new ones have electronic sensors that trigger error codes. Agitator. We need all the agitators we can get right now. But maybe when there’s too much to protest, we end up protesting nothing at all. Like that study that found people prefer a handful of ice cream flavors instead of dozens. Choices can be paralyzing. On inauguration day, he canceled lower prescription drug prices and birthright citizenship, withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and declared there are only two genders. And that was just the warmup. Backpfeifengesicht is German for a face that needs to be punched. I just learned eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher: an egg shell cracker. It literally means an egg shell pre-determined breaking point causer. Germans do love the compound words. The compoundest—compoundiest!—of words. What’s the word for Please let us resist fascism while maintaining our sanity for the next four years? Please hold on, dear old washer. Please hold on, fellow agitators. We can’t let the one with the face that needs to be punched be the breaking point causer.

Editor's Note: This poem is a companion poem to “Insomnia Chronicles XXVI” published Sunday in Rattle. Erin explains, "These ‘Insomnia Chronicles’ are part of a series of poems dramatizing the associative connections sparked by sleeplessness. I imagine there will be plenty of insomnia for the next four years."

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poetry is Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. 

ADRENALINE ATTACK

by Dana Yost

Barry Blitt

Awake all night.

Adrenaline attack.

Not like the attack

in Texas. Not twenty-one dead.

But fueled by that, 

this adrenaline attack.

What is it in us,

in Americans,

that makes it

OK? One mass

shooting after

another.

Some plead,

some pray.

Some say

leave it alone.

Ted Cruz

says don’t

politicize it.

Ted Cruz

needs a bruise.

It has to be politicized.

It has to be debated

in the public arena.

It has to have meaning,

this debate of ours,

or else it’s meaningless,

the senselessness

goes on.

Gunmen squeeze

their triggers

and children die.

The rest of the world

looks at us and

asks “why.”

We have no answer.

We have no answer.

So I stay awake,

shaking, fretting,

swearing. We pray,

we vow, we say

never again,

but they are hollow

phrases until

we put the gun lobby

down like a dog

with a hole in its gut,

which in any logical

world would be

the case: the gun

lobby allowing

these wounds

to open, to fester,

to be picked and pulled

at until the gut is

an open sore.

Awake all night.

Adrenaline attack

the day of a school

attack, the day we mourn

yet again the loss

of little lives.

Dana Yost was an award-winning daily newspaper journalist for 29 years. Since 2008, he has published eight books. His poetry has been published in numerous reviews and magazines, including The New Verse News. Yost is a three-time Pushcart nominee in poetry.

PARROT THERAPY

by Ellen Aronofsky Cole

Credit: Josh Seong / Verywell

The room is fat with jungle sounds.

Haiku runs three-dimensional laps

around her cage, across the floor,

 

up the bars to her food dish, across

two perches, whistles, rings her bell,

repeats. 

 

Okay, I may be turning into Haiku.

 

My manic pacing, the way I roll

and twitch in bed, unceasing motion.

Pamala, the parrot behavior specialist,

 

tells me Haiku’s a fearful bird.

All parrots are, she says. After all,  

they’re prey. So that explains it,

 

my sleepless nights, how I can’t

concentrate, can’t settle.  The congregation

of monsters salivating outside the door,

 

one named COVID, the one we call

World on Fire, the mendacious Cheeto-hued

one bellowing his own name. 

 

My new doctor says we’ll all sleep better

after November third.  Perhaps, but

fear’s a cold bone that runs deep in me,

 

and sleep’s the promised land. This evening

Haiku grinds her beak, a happiness

behavior that precedes sleep. 

 

The sound soothes me. I marvel again

how she twists her head backwards,

buries it beneath her wings.

Ellen Aronofsky Cole has two books of poetry, Notes from the Dry Country (Mayapple Press, 2019) and Prognosis (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her work has appeared in Fledgling Rag,  Bellevue Literary Review, Little Patuxent Review, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Washington Post Magazine, and other journals, and in The New England Journal of Medicine. Ellen lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband Brian and her parrot Haiku.

WAITING FOR THE ELECTION TO BE OVER WITH

by Penelope Scambly Schott

“Frost on the grass,” photograph by Vladimir Axenov.

The man is asleep,

his arm flung back

toward the headboard of their bed.

He snores lightly.

The dog curls warm and small

at the foot of the quilt.

The dog’s ribs move up

and down under fur.

The woman is awake.

She slips out

from under the quilt

and walks to the window.

She pushes back

the white curtain.

Orion is rising over the shed,

his sword tickling

the top branches

of the neighbor’s cottonwood.

The man is still sleeping.

The woman stands at the window.

She knows Mars has moved west

past where she can see it

from this side of the house.

Winter is approaching.

The man’s hair gleams white

in starlight.

The dog’s fur gleams white.

Frost glazes the lawn.

The woman is ready

to step through the glass

in her long white nightgown.

She would lie on her back

in the white frost,

lie there a long time

under stars,

the flesh of her shoulders,

her buttocks,

the heels of her bare feet

feeling the spin of her planet.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.