IN JEOPARDY

by Gary Glauber

 

My potent potable’s amber glow

reflects the lights and I reflect

that we are in jeopardy.

Everything has become a contest.

Surviving a Global Pandemic for 1000, Alex.

Science becomes a new focal point.

The game is charged with toxic partisanship

and many ignore even the obvious clues.

It’s a contest rife with unfathomed wonder,

close and chaotic and requiring an overall knowledge

that frightens the general populace,

yet the game continues to another round.

Heading to commercial, the camera

pans over a studio audience—too old, too white.

Suddenly, a few minutes of pharmaceutical ads

tells me of exotic brand names that can cure my ills

so long as I’m fine with a litany of side effects 

that seem worse than the targeted ailment.

And soon we are back. Alex battling

against his own threatened mortality;

contestants making small talk 

while trying not to self-embarrass

through slow or ignorant response.

Alex may chide them for being too young

to know a particular answer, and this

is the microcosm of how culture shifts,

the ways generational views differ on 

what defines patriotism, which lives matter.

Rule of Law for 600, Alex. 

Conspiracy Theories for 800.

The numbers indicate much is at stake

as we collectively head into the final round.

The category is irrelevant:

life revealed as a ruthless game.  

What are the parameters of true compassion?

When is a life worth less than economic progress?

Do the necessary math, then

wager it all when you realize this:

all the answers have been phrased as questions 

for far too long.   

Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog, and strives to survive modern life’s absurdities. He has three collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit) as well as two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize. Another collection, A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing), is forthcoming soon. 

LAND OF THE LIVING

by Laura Rodley

Image source: Pinterest

It is late April and night peepers sleep;
it is too warm right now for them to weep.

They want a cool night, to turn on spring’s lathe,
awaking in the pond where wood ducks bathe.

Too warm for them and too cold for my Dad
resting in his pond of electric bed, glad

to close his eyes and breathe, oxygen on,
waiting for Rachel Maddow, nighttime fawn

who only speaks through airways, her hollow
full of lights, as though the sun she swallows;

as soon as the lights are dim, she retreats
back into the deep woods on sneakered feet,

a fawn who speaks English, siphons the news,
that now is keeping my Dad living, glued.

Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

ON THE DEATH OF GARY SHANDLING

by Jim Gustafson

                         
   With thanks to Mikhail Iossel.

One by one, Mikhail says,
they are leaving through the door
permanently left ajar.
The party goes on without them.
Conversations and feigned laughter
roll into the hall. Ice cubes toll
the glasses. I will have one more.

They are not old.  Some younger
than I have left. The funny ones
see jokes that I just walk by.
They have left their drinks
on the table. Small napkins soak
the sweat. Carrying laughter,
they vanish down the stairs,
through the doors, out
onto the dark lamp avenue.

Others will follow. The songs
will replay. People will ask
did we hear that a while ago,
or is a while ago now?
The music is never forgotten.

Along the damp streets, heel taps
echo against the brownstones.
The funny ones hear and wonder
if they are alone. They stop and listen
then go on, thinking, have you heard
the one about the guy who was alone
and heard footsteps?

Jim Gustafson holds a Master of Divinity from Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Tampa. His chapbook, Driving Home, was published by Aldrich Press in 2013. He teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University and Florida Southwestern State College. His work has most recently appeared in Prick of the Spindle and The Tishman Review. Jim lives in Fort Myers, Florida where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.