INSOMNIA CHRONICLES LIX

by Erin Murphy

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. When I hear contempt, I think contretemps. Instead of raging hatred, I see mild embarrassment, two girls showing up at prom in the same dress. Better yet, contra dance: two lines of partnerless dancers, a caller announcing moves to the beat of fiddles and mandolins. Years ago, a contra dancing club met Mondays in a local barn. Members brought potluck meals they kept warm under tea towels. Or so I imagine. I never went but was intrigued by the small ads in the weekly paper. All welcome, bring a dish. How did we find out about anything back then? No internet, no cell phones. If I were dropped in the middle of 1990, could I find my way home? The past is a foreign country, someone once said. Lately, so is this moment. During the pandemic, one house on our block had a Trust Dr. Fauci banner on the front porch. Across the street, neighbors planted a Fauci is a Liar lawn sign. My friend Joan says it’s everyone’s first time being a person. Most of us are personing the best we can. We try, try, stumble, try. Contra dancers weave in and out of other bodies, wipe brows with damp bandanas, grant grace for missed cues. Look each other in the eye.

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of sixteen books, most recently Swoon: New and Selected Poems (Grayson Books, 2026).

LIGHTNING

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Trying to make sense of lightning is about more

than science. How long should students lower

their heads, consult their books, run computer

simulations and not look outside.

 

By the time you read this message a bolt will

have struck in dozens of locations, though

you might not have registered the flash. The smell

of ozone in your nose, learning to count for thunder.

Did you know lightning can be silent. An owl.

 

Friction travels from cloud to cloud. It’s over my head

I’ve heard

told. There’s a space in the great codes for interpellations,

gnostic meanings, hidden from the rabble: debates about what’s

in plain view

 

Can someone without sight see a storm.

What if they also cannot hear.   

Lightning can be a figment of the mind:

logos. But if we cannot make observations

what is science.

 

Every one of us has dreams. There were heat storms

over my crib. I couldn’t talk but in my gut I knew some

thing was wrong.

 

Let the infants cry. For the betterment of science.

Watch them, how they respond. From the blur comes

a woman’s features. Mother? But not the storm.

 

They cry because they know she’s an electric force,

violence with the texture of milk—

Jeremy Nathan Marks knows that his own instinct to try to enucleate the problem is a self-deception. But he's stubborn. He lives and writes (stubbornly) in Canada.