BETTER MOMENTS

by Joel Savishinsky

Federal regulators said Wednesday that they will begin penalizing nursing homes that give residents a false label of schizophrenia, a practice that many facilities have used to skirt restrictions on antipsychotic drugs, which can be especially dangerous for older people. —The New York Times, January 18, 2023. Photo: Yvonne Blakeney’s husband, David, a dementia patient, was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after arriving at a nursing home. Credit: Sean Rayford for The New York Times.

In my better moments, 
I know my head’s not 
right… but this is wrong.
 
There are dark caves inside my mouth, 
where their blind stupidity
is not my disability, 
spaces that enable me to
hide their pills inside my cheek, 
under my tongue, 
back in the recess behind 
my lower right molar. 
 
I am not dumb. 
I’ve read the text, 
and know the fate 
of those who’d fly 
over the cuckoo’s nest. 
I’ll sit right here and 
won’t take flight, but 
find refuge in a 
remnant of integrity.
 
In my better moments, 
I know my rights.

 
Joel Savishinsky, a retired professor of anthropology and gerontology, is the author of The Ends of Time: Life and Work in a Nursing Home and Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, both of which won the Gerontological Society of America’s book-of-the-year prize. His collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging, will be published by The Poetry Box in 2023.

DREAM OR NIGHTMARE

by George Held

1.

 

Is this dream or nightmare

from which we awaken?

 

Do we live still in the age of Frost

or T***p? The answer is debatable,

 

But our destiny is unknown: do we have

the strength to preserve our ever-

 

challenged democracy, the republic

for which "Old Glory" stands?

 

2.

 

The old, glorious words Hemingway

declared dead in The Great War

 

need renewal or replacement,

but how replace “honor,” “integrity,”

 

“truth”—just uttering that word

in the Senate after the Insurrection

 

earned Romney applause— when “disgrace,”

“fake,” and “disaster” still ring in our ears

 

and lesser poets fill Inauguration Day

with shibboleth and cliché?

3.

 

“The Gift Outright,” while not the poet’s best,

still provides us food for thought—

 

“The land was ours before we were the land’s…”—

 

as we waken from the four-year dream

or nightmare.

George Held is a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News.

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE HORSES

by Tricia Knoll

Horse Statue by jellobuster at DeviantArt

One million dead in the Civil War,
if you count the mules.
Which I do.

I say, blowtorch the rebel statue
men off their mounts and keep
the horses striding on their pedestals.

They were not traitors
to their country, showed no sign
of caring who they carried,

black or white, male or
female. Their integrity
is without question.

They did the work
they were asked to do
without a nod at glory.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet with a deep fondness for horses. I can see these statues with newly installed saddles replacing the old white men, perhaps ladders for children to climb up on.